


White Rabbit

by sparrowshellcat



Series: Wonderland AU [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chronicles of Riddick Series
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 09:31:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 13
Words: 158,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander Harris has no idea that he is adopted. But in the span of a week, he not only finds out that his parents aren't his birth parents, manages to get put into "protective house arrest" by his friends (and he's not even really sure why), and gets sent into space, where he literally lands on the head of the most wanted convict in the verse. Exploring space with a criminal sounds like a terrifying idea, especially as things start getting stranger and he starts to think even more and more that his birth parents might not have been human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have to say that I was beyond lucky for my story to be chosen by Chosenfire28. Her artwork is amazing, and I couldn't have imagined anything better. (Literally, I am having that poster printed and put on my wall!) This story has become an absolute labour of love for me, and this story will not be the end of the Wonderland AU. Huge thanks to Adnama Rellim for both teaching me that this pairing was legitimate, and being patient enough to beta for me!
> 
> \---
> 
> For more fic and art, you can follow me on Tumblr! [sparrowshellcat](http://sparrowshellcat.tumblr.com)

  


**White Rabbit - Preface to the Eighty-Sixth Thousand**

  
**  
**

 

She ran.

Booted feet slapping against the dirt with a sort of dull thud, she dashed recklessly through the woods, weaving and darting between trees as though it was second nature. Branches slapped her face, her arms, her legs, catching in her torn clothes, her hair. At one point, a tightly woven bead adorned braid snarled on a tree branch, like reaching fingers, but she just tore herself loose with the fervour of a trapped animal, and left the braid behind.

Blood ran freely down her face, down the inside of her legs, but she didn’t let it slow her down.

It was only when her leg struck a rock and she went down with a cry that she showed the first sign of self-preservation – one hand was thrown out in an attempt to slow her fall, and her other arm cradled her child-heavy belly, fighting to protect the unborn one she carried.

Teeth grit against the pain, she struggled back to her feet, and paused for a moment. Her breathing wasn’t as laboured as might be expected, considering the circumstances, but every few moments, it would catch. When it did, she’d press the flat of her hand hard to her belly, as though trying to tell something to her child.

As suddenly as she had tumbled, she took her flight back up again, running towards an area where the trees thinned.

Bursting through the treeline, her boots slapped loudly on the wet pavement, drawing her up short at the obvious signs of human habitation. Headlights sliced through the pre-dusk gloom, slipping over her, and illuminating her for the bloody mess she was moments before the drivers of the car saw her, and slammed on the brakes with an aborted cry.

The van skidded, almost sliding off the road, but the woman didn’t even attempt to get out of the way. Too stunned, perhaps. Blood loss. Maybe some other reason.

It skidded to a halt, finally, mere inches from her knees, and _then_ she moved, laying her hands on the good as she cried out in pain.

“Oh my god, lady, are you okay?!”

The driver scrambled out of the front seat, dashing around to brace her arm. He was afraid, and not without good reason, really, that she’d just collapse if she stood another minute more on her own. His passenger was half out of her seat, door open as she fumbled with her heavy car phone, already on the line with 9-1-1.

“What happened?” the driver tried again, trying to help her around to the side door of the large van, to help her sit. “Was there a wreck or something?”

She answered – or it seemed like she did, at least. But the words she said made no sense.

“Ellen!” he called, looking up. “Tell ‘em she doesn’t speak English!”

His wife nodded, quickly, adding that information to what she had already given the emergency services. After listening to them for a moment, she called, “Is it Spanish?”

“Ah…” he fumbled, his pronunciation rusty, and asked the bloody woman, “ _Se hablo espanol_?”

She gaped up at him, starting to tremble not that she was sitting instead of running, blood loss making her normally olive skin pale, the only thing keeping her conscious the now-ebbing adrenaline.

“I don’t think so,” he called back, then asked, “Do they just want us to drive her there? Might be faster…”

“Lavelle,” the woman said, shaking hands resting on her belly, looking genuinely terrified. “Lavelle.”

He touched her belly, beside her hand, eyes widening sharply.

“Fuck it.” He didn’t wait for Ellen to get an answer, and just helped the woman swing her legs inside, slamming the door shut. His own hands were bloody and shaky as he dashed back into his seat, barely getting the door shut before he was already peeling away, tires squealing.

“Keith!” Ellen gasped, jerking her door shut. “They said they were sending an ambulance – “

“She’s in labour, Ellen,” he gasped, which made her stop talking immediately. “And with the amount of blood it looks like she’s already lost…”

Ellen nodded, pale. “I’ll tell them to be ready.”

The woman shifted as they drove at speeds that were illegal on every road they crossed, pulling her knees up as much as she could, so that she was all but crouching on the seats, rubbing her rounded stomach and whispering to it in her unrecognizable language, murmuring soothing promises. She barely even flinched when they had to veer to avoid other cars, and when they pulled with a screech of protesting brakes into the hospital parking lot and a waiting paramedic slid the door of the van open, she slid off of the seat on her own power, standing fairly steadily.

One of the paramedics tried to guide her to lie down on the gurney they had waiting, but she bared her teeth at the suggestion, all but snarling.

They let her walk in on her own steam, though there had to be at least three paramedics around her, ready to catch her if she fell. One stayed back to have a hurried, low toned conversation with Keith and Ellen, to find out what they knew, but the major activity in the Sunnydale hospital that night was focused on the bloody woman walking herself into the emergency surgery room they had set aside for her. 

There, they finally managed to get her to lie down, though she still showed no sign of understanding what they were saying. She followed basic demonstrated orders, but the stubborn woman with her jaw grit tightly simply did as she seemed to want.

One of the nurses managed to help her out of her tattered, singed and burned clothing, though she viciously refused to wear the worn hospital gown they tried to put on her, and finally just let them pull a blanket over her.

Now that she was naked, however, the urgency of the situation was hitting the medical staff hard. She was bleeding, profusely. Along with whatever head wound she had gotten that covered half of her face and down her neck and collarbone with gore, there was still the blood running freely down her legs, and the arm she had been using to cradle her stomach earlier was visibly broken in at least three places – two on her forearm, one on the upper. Minor superficial wounds covered her, and one of her shoulders was actually blackened along the edges of a massive, open and raw red wound, as though someone had lit her skin on fire.

They brought a translator in, but none of the languages they tried with her worked – not Spanish, not French, and absolutely not English. 

Finally, they gave up on the attempts to communicate, and just tried to make sure that she was as comfortable as she could be as they tried to get the delivery – which was coming along faster and faster, the way it was going – to be as controlled and easy as possible. One of the nurses was tasked with setting up an iv, but the second she tried, the woman let out a shout that was almost like a bark, and wrenched the needle from her hands, throwing it away. Two subsequent attempts got the same reaction.

One of the doctors, a Dr. Marsha Goldstein, called one of the younger nurses, Jessica, over, and murmured, “If she won’t let us put in an iv for slow acting medications, we’re going to have to give her an epidural. But she doesn’t understand us, so we can’t give proper information… can you _try_ and talk to her, see if you can explain anything to her, so we can put it in?”

Jessica hesitated, and nodded, making her way carefully to the side of the woman’s bed.

Reaching out to carefully touch the other’s hand, she smiled hopefully when the stranger jumped, teeth bared, and said softly, as soothingly as she could, “Lean forward, okay? It’ll be easier on your back, just curl forward.”

She stared at her, non-comprehension on her face.

Gripping the woman’s hands gently, she tugged her forward, slowly, relieved that the woman followed the lead. She seemed willing to follow leading so long as it was simple and didn’t involve danger, so within a few moments, Jessica had the woman curled forward over her own belly, squeezing the nurse’s hands tightly every time a contraction rippled through her.

It was just as a contraction was beginning to ripple through her again that Dr. Goldstein attempted the epidural.

Just as the needle gently touched her skin, not even breaking it, the woman twisted, her face a mask of feral rage. She snatched the needle out of the doctor’s hands, and jabbed the needle deep and hard into the woman’s throat without a moment of hesitation, slamming her thumb down on the plunger and sinking the pain and numbing medication straight into the doctor’s throat.

There were shouts and cries of surprise and horror, and a security guard scrambled forward, a sort of terrifying anger in his eyes.

“Wait!” Jessica cried, reaching up to grab the stranger’s wrists again, trying to tug her back into a better sitting position. “No, wait… wait, she’s all right! She’s just scared!”

The security guard hesitated, slowly stepping back as the other doctors hurried to care for their injured colleague. Dr. Goldstein was gagging and gasping, tugging the needle slowly out of her throat, hands shaking. “I’m going to need… someone call Dr. Washburn… take care of her… don’t try anymore needles…”

Dr. Rodney took over, nodding quickly.

Just squeezing the strange woman’s hands softly, Jessica whispered, “It’s going to be okay, it is… you and your baby are going to be all right, I promise.”

The woman keened softly, squeezing the young nurse’s gloved fingers tightly, giving her a ghost of a smile, as though she knew what she was saying. She just curled over harder, though, breathing harder and faster through her teeth, squeezing Jessica’s fingers tighter. 

One of the nurses had taken some of the copious blood for testing, to try and arrange for getting blood for transfusions, but if she refused all needles, that wasn’t really going to help anyway.

But the blood loss was clearly taking a toll. 

The woman was almost paper white now, and though she squeezed Jessica’s fingers tightly, the grip wasn’t with the same tight squeeze that it was before. Jessica was actually starting to feel her fingertips again. Her breathing was harsher, ragged gasps as she bit down so hard on her lip she’d actually gone through it at one point, and blood was trickling down her jaw and throat.

But something worked, and over the sounds of people working and nurses talking to each other, and machinery pumping and working and beeping, there came a wail, a strong set of tiny lungs taking on air for the first time and howling his arrival to the world. 

The woman let out a breathless, pleased cry, and slumped back in the bed, rasping for breath.

“It’s a boy!” One of the nurses called, holding up a small, bloody bundle, and already they could see the little one stretching his arms, reaching up at the sky, desperately. Grinning, the nurse started cleaning a little of the blood off, then turned to head for the corner, for the little table where she would do all the standard exams – length, weight, size, and, especially considering the circumstances, for injuries – when the woman bolted forward on the bed, reaching out to snatch the nurse’s arm, jerking her closer. Ignoring the woman’s shouts of protests, explanations that it would only be a moment to check on the baby’s health, the bloody stranger slid the little one out of her arm, and leaned back.

Cradling the infant in her broken arm so that his head lay against her chest, against her heart, she used her good hand to skim her fingertips over the infant, as though performing a search of her own, for something wrong. Finally, she slumped back, her search apparently finished. 

She tried to hum a little song, some kind of nursery song, but before she got more than a few bars in, she started to gag and cough. As she did, blood started spraying in a fine mist across her own chest, across the infant. Someone shouted and reached for the little one, but Jessica didn’t even notice, just reached up to touch her own cheeks, surprised when she pulled her hands away and found blood smearing on her fingertips. The woman had sprayed her with what little blood she had left in her body, too.

“Someone get that baby,” Dr. Rodney said, firmly, shifting a table forward, various surgical instruments on it. “I need to get her stitched up, or she _is_ going to bleed to death.”

Jessica started to move out of the way, so that the doctors and the trauma nurses who had been waiting would be able to do their job. But before she could, the woman had bolted forward again, gripping Jessica’s wrist so tightly she could actually feel her bones grinding together. She gasped in pain, gaping at the stranger, even more confused when she tugged her closer and awkwardly shifted the little bloody bundle in her arms into Jessica’s.

She held the little one close, instinctively, trembling.

The last of her strength gone, the woman slumped back to the pillows, and reached towards the little one’s dark hair, which was still slick and wet with blood and afterbirth, almost touching his soft head. “Lavelle,” she wheezed, coughing again, and fought to control it. 

“Lavelle?” Jessica repeated, holding the baby boy close to her chest. He was starting to squirm, as though knowing something was wrong.

“Lavelle,” she said again, voice going weaker, bright eyes starting to glaze over. “Lavelle Alexander.”

“Alexander – it’s his _name_ ,” she gasped, suddenly understanding.

“La’elle Ale’nder…” she slurred, blood bubbling slowly out of her mouth, eyes only open the slightest slit now.

“Jessica! Get _back_!” Dr. Rodney ordered, and she stumbled back as the doctor worked to save the woman, just cradling the little baby close as he wailed and the men and women crowded around her, struggling. She felt sort of numb, just standing in the back corner of the room, covered in a stranger’s blood, holding a stranger’s baby against her breast, like she was standing in a small soundless bubble as the men and women around her worked frantically and the child wailed. 

She barely even heard when they declared time of death.  
  
[Down the Rabbit Hole](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/46760.html)  



	2. Chapter 2

  


  
**White Rabbit - Down the Rabbit Hole**

 

 

Xander Harris was about to have the worst day of his life.

He just didn’t know it yet.

After all, it started innocuously enough, what reason could he possibly have for expecting it to be different? He was doing what he always liked doing on a Tuesday afternoon, skipping Geometry by “helping” Giles “research” in the library. 

“Wake up, Xander.”

The teenager bolted awake, startled, blinking at the middle-aged librarian, who was looking at him with a serious, slightly pinched expression. He blinked a few more times, then cleared his throat, and asked, “Yeah?”

“You’re drooling on the Necronomicon.”

He glanced down at the book spread out in front of him on the table, and hastily tugged the cuff of his sleeve over his hand to wipe it up. It seemed to actually smear the letters on the page, and he winced, just sort of patting it down, instead. Clearing his throat again, he glanced up. “There. All better.”

Giles sighed heavily, and simply tugged off his glasses, polishing them on his tie.

“Sorry.” He shrugged, clearing his throat. “So… ah… did I manage to get anything good _before_ I fell – I mean, started resting my eyes?”

“No, nothing especially worthwhile,” Giles smiled faintly, sitting across from him at the table, tugging the Necronomicon out from Xander’s way. “But then we weren’t really looking for anything in particular, were we? Just do try not to drool on these books… they’re rather priceless.”

“I’ll start wearing a bib,” he held up his right hand, as though swearing on it. 

“Yes well, I’m not certain that will help.” Giles said deprecatingly, and reached across to awkwardly pat the other’s arm. “Perhaps you should ah… fetch provisions.”

Xander blinked at him.

“Get donuts, Xander,” he said, helplessly.

“ _Oh_ , yeah! I can – “ Xander stood, then hesitated, still tucked in behind the table. “But I’m not supposed to leave school grounds during school hours, remember?”

“Classes have ended for the day, Xander,” he said, smiling slightly, standing as he began to stack the books that Xander had been “reading”, pausing when he found the _Rituals of the Witches_ amongst the pile, and gave the teenager a stern look before stacking them on the book cart. “You slept through Geometry and Geography both. Should you wish it, you are even permitted to leave this building and return home.”

“Pshaw,” he laughed. “Home is lame. Anything you want in particular?”

“Of course not.” Giles hesitated, then held up a finger. “Unless you have one of those… types with the jam bit inside of it…?”

“I’ll make sure I get lots of jelly filled,” he grinned, and all but bounced out of the library, humming.

Relieved by the moment of silence, Giles began shelving the books Xander had displaced, enjoying the calm stillness and silence of the library as he slid books onto the wooden shelving units, smiling softly. The comfortable relaxed pace of the library – when there were no teenagers filling it – was a soothing, almost spiritual experience.

An experience that was broken in short order by the squeals of teenaged girls laughing, and Giles took a deep breath to brace himself before stepping out into the open to face his wards. 

Willow spotted him first, and waved, eagerly, all but bouncing beside Buffy, who was holding out a magazine, and pointing out something in it. Something about how she wondered how Angel would like her in it, or something. Something that teenaged girls worried about with their girlfriends and their boyfriends. He knew precious little about their affairs. He tended to tune out when they talked. 

“Hello, girls,” he said, breaking Buffy’s rant.

She looked up, blinking at him for a moment, then set the magazine down, resting a hand on her hip. “Hey, Giles. Have you heard anything yet?”

It took him a moment to understand what she meant, then realized she was still wondering if he’d seen her vampire – and wasn’t that a funny thought, the slayer and her vampire – since her aborted birthday party the other night. He hadn’t, so he shook his head, apologetically.

“Oh.” She looked crestfallen for a moment, then perked herself forcibly back up. “Where’s our Xan-Man?”

“I believe he went to get provisions,” he said calmly, trying to make it seem _less_ like he’d all but ordered the boy to go get donuts for him, and tugged off his glasses, polishing them on his tie again.

“Oooh, donuts!” Willow bounced in place, eagerly. 

He shook his head, smiling slightly.

Buffy flopped down in one of the large armed wooden chairs, boneless, and slung her legs up onto the table. She only grinned when Giles yelped and darted to tug a book out of her way. “So what’s the word, then, Giles? Something to slay? Monsters to kill? Apocalypses to avert?”

Willow slid into the chair beside hers, beaming eagerly up at the librarian, almost hopeful.

“No… nothing of the sort. The agenda is blissfully free of disasters for the moment.” Giles beamed. “Which will leave more time for training.”

Buffy crinkled her nose, displeased.

There was a knock on the library door, then a dark haired woman leaned inside, looking about for a moment, then grinned when she spotted Giles standing by the table. _He_ immediately flushed, and straightened, flattening his tie, compulsively. “Hey… Rupert.” She grinned, looking pleased. “Sorry to tug you away from your students, but can I borrow you for a piece? I have a program I’ve been working on, and it could use a librarian’s eye.”

He blinked. “A _computer_ program could?”

“It’s a digital library,” she smirked. “For e-books.”

At his horrified expression, she just laughed, and pushed the door open fully. “Come on, Rupert. Let’s go take a look, shall we? I’ll see if I can blow your Neanderthal booky mind a little more.”

He looked helplessly at Buffy and Willow, who just grinned, and shooed him off.

Giles took a deep breath, and followed Jenny Callander out of the library.

They waited until he was _just_ outside before dissolving into helpless giggles, as Buffy giggled, “He has it _so_ bad!”

Willow nodded, eagerly, beaming at her best friend. “So… have you heard anything from Angel yet?”

The slayer hesitated, then shook her head.

“Oh…” she murmured. “Well… I’m sure he’s all right….”

“What if something _happened_ to him?” Buffy asked, hissing. “I mean, maybe not everybody is as understanding of the fact that he’s a vampire with a _soul_ and that he’s not just an evil thing that needs to be killed… what if someone staked him?”

“No one would have done that,” she said quickly, eyes wide. “Angel can take care of himself.”

Buffy nodded, quietly. “Yeah…”

Giles’ office door opened and both looked up in surprise, not having expected someone new to emerge from the safety of the man’s stronghold, and Buffy let out a cry of relief and delight when Angel slipped into the library proper, but her cry died as she gaped at the vampire, shocked. 

Simply put, he looked like hell. 

Angel’s face was a mess of blood and cuts and bruises, a deep cut under one of his eyes. His lip was split, and he seemed to be moving with a limp, favouring his right side, his arm sort of cradled against his chest. He smiled weakly at the Slayer when she darted forward to check on him, but his eyes were flickering around the library, as though looking for something.

“Angel, come on – sit down,” Buffy tried to usher him towards one of the chairs around the table, concerned, fingers trembling.

He followed, but still looked reluctant. “Is anyone else here?”

“No, just the two of us,” Willow darted for the first aid kit on the wall, and hustled back just a few moments later with iodine and a bag of cotton balls and a handful of Hello Kitty bandages that she had restocked the kit with a long time ago. Sitting on the chair beside his, she started putting iodine on one of the cotton balls. “Ready?”

He nodded, seeming more relaxed.

Buffy hopped onto the table in front of Angel, resting her dangling feet between his knees as she smiled softly at him, reaching up to play with the edge of his jacket lapel, quietly. He smiled faintly up at her, lip cracking a little more as he did, blood bright and red on his lip.

“What happened, Angel?” She asked, concerned. “Where were you?”

Willow bit her lip, carefully trying to clean the vampire up, just trying to not intrude in the obviously private moment, otherwise.

He hesitated, and took her hands, squeezing her fingers gently. “Well... I heard a sound. So I went to check on it, and... someone hit me. Hard, in the head, and when I woke up, I was in the back of one of the stores in that alley.”

She hissed. “ _Kendra_.”

“It wasn’t Kendra,” he said quickly, squeezing her fingers.

“Who did it, then?!” Buffy demanded, clearly ready to leap up and go lay the hurt down on whoever had done this to him. 

“I don’t know if I want to tell you,” he said softly, biting his lip. “I mean... I don’t really believe it myself...”

“Angel!” She begged, eyes wide and scared. And angry.

The vampire took a deep, unneeded breath, then touched her cheek gently, and murmured, “Xander.”

Willow yelped then, dropping the iodine. “ _Xander_!?”

Buffy gaped at her vampire. “Xander? I mean... I know you two don’t really get along that well, but I don’t think he’d ever _hurt_ you...”

“You didn’t see him, Buffy,” he whispered, soothingly. “He smelled wrong. He _looked_ wrong. His eyes were... I think he might have been possessed, or something. I’ve never seen him looking like that before.”

Willow and Buffy traded meaningful looks, and Willow whispered, “Hyena?”

Angel arched a brow, intrigued. 

“Did he do this?” Buffy demanded, abruptly, running her thumb along her lover’s lower lip, blood catching on her thumb when she did. “Did _Xander_ do this to you?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “With a pipe, or something.”

She hissed, glancing at Willow, eyes wide and scared. Looking back at her, the other girl looked just as scared. 

“Are you _sure_ it was Xander?” Willow whispered. 

“Sure _looked_ like Xander,” Angel said, with a wry sort of look.

Buffy swallowed. 

“I should go,” Angel stood, quietly, still holding Buffy’s hands. “I have some blood in my fridge, I really need to go drink... I’ve been trapped by him for days, and every time I thought I was going to get away, he’d come back and start hitting again... I really need to get some sleep.”

Buffy shifted closer, hopefully. “I can come by later?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll call you. Need a safe time, you know how it is. Don’t want to be jumped by Xander again.”

“Of course!” She gasped, quickly.

“Thank you, Buffy, for everything.” He bent to press his bloody lips lightly to hers, then slipped out from his seat, and heading to Giles’ office again, to leave the library and slip into the sewers.

To his credit, he waited until he’d _reached_ the sewers before he started laughing.

That had worked a lot better than he’d expected.

“I can’t believe Xander would - “ Willow started, eyes bright and slightly wet. She looked like her entire world had been rocked.

“Xander with the hyena would have,” Buffy whispered back. “But he's not possessed... he can't be possessed... can he? I mean, we haven't been to the zoo, we haven't gone anywhere, and there is no way Xander would do that... Xander would never do that...”

“Xander's not that kind of person! He doesn't like Angel, but - “ Willow threw up her hands. “Oh my god! Shapeshifters!”

“What?” Buffy gaped at her.

“Well, there are stories - “ Willow scrambled up to check the shelves, flipping through dozens of books. Buffy watched her with a slightly suspicious expression, frowning as she watched her friend. Finally, with a triumphant cry, she darted back to the table, hugging a book larger than her torso, really. Slapping it open on the table, Willow flicked through the pages until she threw it open to a story about a woman whose entire fortune was stolen by a shapeshifter disguising itself as her son. “See? Shapeshifters. And if you're ever going to find shapeshifters, they're going to be in Sunnydale, aren't they?”

Buffy hesitated, considering that for a moment. “...yeah, that's possible... but are you sure it's a shapeshifter?”

“Angel _said_ he looked like Xander, right? But he could have been fooled, right? Shapeshifters are really good at deceiving people like that, and there is no way Xander would _do_ that to anyone! It's not just that it's Angel! He'd never do that to _anyone_!”

She groaned softly, and nodded. “Yeah, I know. There is no way... none...”

“What should we _do_?” Willow whispered.

“Well, we have to figure this out! I mean, Xander wouldn't – oh no. Wait... wait, what do shapeshifters _do_ when they take a person's form?”

She blinked at her friend. “Huh?”

“I mean... do they... do they _hurt_ the people they copy?”

Willow gaped at the Slayer in horror, then flicked through the book at an almost frantic pace, eyes wide as she tried to find the answer. “Um... I – I don't know, but – oh. _Oh_.” 

“Willow?”

“...this story says that – sometimes... they kill the person they're copying so that no one knows that they're copying...”

“We need to get Xander somewhere safe,” Buffy bolted to her feet, face pale, jaw set in a stern, determined line. She may just be a teenaged girl, really, but she was a fiercely loyal teenaged girl with remarkable powers and a protective streak a mile wide. And right now, she had two people to keep safe – the vampire she loved, and the best friend she depended on. 

They jumped when both doors swung wide open with a bang as they slammed against the wall and the desk on the other side, and Xander sort of breezed into the library, a bounce to his steps, a pink cardboard box of donuts in his hands, four large Styrofoam cups balanced on top. 

“My ladies! Ladies of me! I come bearing donuts and hot chocolate! Fall prostrate before me and worship my feet for my gifts!” Xander crowed, then paused, blinking at the girls. They both had their arms crossed as they looked seriously, sternly at him. “...and I’m getting the ‘no’ face. Why am I getting the no face? Is it the whole use of the word prostrate? I swear, Giles tells me it means ‘on your face on the floor’, not that thingy inside men that makes doctors say to turn your head and cough...”

“You need to go home. Now.” Willow said, voice cracking slightly.

Xander blinked. “...okay, I’ll never take the librarian’s advice on words again.”

“Go home, Xander.” Buffy said firmly.

“...what'd I do _this_ time?” He blinked at them. “Is this cause of the Necronomicon thing? I swear I didn't mean to drool on it...”

“No, Xander...” Willow stepped forward, quickly, reaching up to squeeze his upper arms, smiling sadly at him. It was a nervous sort of smile, the kind a mother gives when she's lying to her children that everything is going to be just fine. “You didn't do anything... I promise...”

“Well, don't promise _that_ , it could have been possession,” Buffy stepped forward, brows furrowed.

He looked back and forth between his two best friends, bewildered. “What _are_ you talking about? Possession? I haven't been possessed! ...lately.”

“Well, you might not _remember_ it,” Buffy pointed out.

“It might not be possession!” Willow reminded her, fiercely. “It could have been a shapeshifter, remember?”

“ _Shapeshifter_?” Xander gaped at them.

“Promise me something, Xander.” Buffy said firmly, stepping closer to him. He was still holding the coffees and the donuts, looking bewildered. “Promise me you never hurt Angel.”

He gaped at her. Then abruptly he laughed, a sort of hysterical, broken sort of sound. “ _What_? Me? Hurt Angel? Oh and here i thought you were actually being serious about this whole thing... me. _Me_. I mean, I'm totally flattered that you think I'm strong enough to beat up a master vampire and everything, but the most _hurting_ I could do to Angel is maybe insulting his outfit a little. Sorry to disappoint.”

She frowned, considering him.

“I believe him,” Willow said, firmly.

“Why the hell _wouldn't_ you believe me?” Xander looked back and forth between them both. “I'm a totally believable guy! I'm a _really_ believable guy! And an honest man, and a smart one, and a totally kickass warrior man, and – wait, what are we believing me about this time?”

“Someone attacked Angel.” Buffy said, expression torn. “And he said it was you.”

He gaped at his friend. “I never attacked Angel. _Never_.”

“I believe you,” The redhead said again, earnestly, looking up at him. “I don't think you would do that. Buffy thinks it could have been possession, you know, that maybe you did it only it wasn't your fault and you don't remember it happening, but I think it was a shapeshifter, and I'm really worried that the shapeshifter will try to kill you or something because sometimes they do that so that no one realizes they're a copy and not the real thing - “

“Breathe, Willow,” Buffy reminded her gently.

“Right,” she flushed.

“So... what do we do?” Xander gaped at his friends. “We need to hunt this son of a bitch down, right? Clear my good name, or at least decent name, but clear it, anyway. That's what we do now, right?”

“No.” Buffy shook her head. “Go home. We'll take over the hunt, we'll take care of it. You go home and hang out somewhere safe.”

“...woah.” He shook his head. “I don't want to just _hide_ while you guys hunt a thing that looks like me!”

“It's the safest thing, Xander,” Willow said softly. “You need to stay out of the way, just in case. We don't want to accidentally stake _you_ because we're trying to stake a shapeshifter.”

“But – but wouldn't it come to my _house_ if it was trying to find me?” He was grasping at straws, now.

“Just _listen_ to us for once, Xander,” the Slayer said, frustrated. 

“Hey, if you're trying to find someone that looks like _me_ ,” he protested, angrily. “I think I deserve the right to be there! I don't think I deserve to be stuck on the sidelines or something, I can be just as useful as anyone else here! I mean, okay, yeah, I'm not a slayer or a witch, but I still – shouldn't I be allowed to be _involved_? Hey, I could bring donuts to the hunt!” He held up the donut box. “No shapeshifter is gonna do that!”

“Just go home, Xander.” Buffy said firmly, frowning. “Just. Go. Home.”

He blinked. “But... donuts...”

She snatched them out of his hands, slamming the box and the cups on the table, probably a lot harder than was really necessary. Partially she was just trying to make a point. Partially she just really wanted her best friend to actually listen to her for once. “ _Go_!”

Slowly, Xander backed up, looking to Willow for support.

He found none in her face. She was nodding, with a good old fashioned determined Willow-Resolve-Face firmly on. She agreed with Buffy, when it came to Xander's safety being in question. She wanted him to be at home, safe.

He keened, and slowly left the library again, as frustrated as he had ever been. And that was saying a _lot_.

  
 

\---

Xander stumbled down the quiet, late afternoon streets of Sunnydale, sort of in a daze. There was no danger besides the occasional motorist, this time of day, but if he’d done this in this state just a few hours later, he would have been vampire bait. 

As it was, he walked perfectly safely, though numbly, down the sidewalks. Hands in his pockets, he would kick a pebble until it was lost in the grass, then he’d pick a new pebble and start again.

Willow and Buffy were trying to keep him safe from either some kind of possession – and he would have thought they'd want him there with them if he really _was_ possessed – or some kind of crazy shapeshifter. 

His best friends, sending him home because a vampire said he was getting all beating-the-undead-locals happy.

Boy, wasn’t it a funny ol’ world?

He sighed when he reached a corner and had to wait for the little crosswalk light to switch from the red hand to the little green man, resting his head back on his shoulders. Staring up into the blue California sky, he tried to figure out just what, exactly, he _had_ done. He was drawing a blank.

Honestly, Xander couldn’t remember doing a thing towards the vampire. Oh sure, he hated Angel’s guts, but that was mostly because Angel hated him first. He was good about that - if you hated him, Xander was likely to either try valiantly to convince you to like him, or, barring that possibility, to hate you right back. But as much as they were both charter members of their little mutual hatred association, Xander couldn’t remember a single time that Angel had lied and said Xander had done something when he hadn’t. He’d been quick to tell them the asshole things he _had_ done, but he could never remember him _lying_.

Xander glanced at the little sign, and realized it was already flashing to let him know he’d completely missed his chance to walk, so he darted across the street before the stop light turned red, and hurried on the road.

Worst part was, he must have convinced the girls that it was something _really_ terrible, judging by their reactions. Okay, sure, they thought that he was possessed or someone else or something, but... really, what had Angel told them he'd done?

Sighing, resolving to call Willow later tonight and ask her just what exactly was going on with this search and _please_ was there some way he could help, Xander turned to head up the cracked sidewalk to his house. There were weeds growing in the cracks, and the porch creaked, sagging under his weight as he bounced up, stepping in the familiar worn places, reaching over the front door to pull down the key that always rested on the door frame, in case he locked himself out - which he always did - and let himself into the house.

The first thing that hit him was the smell of burnt black bread, and he crinkled his nose. 

Great. Dad was drunk, and he was trying to cook.

Again.

Taking a deep breath, he slipped for the staircase, hoping to get upstairs and to his room before Tony spotted him and started screaming, or, even worse, swinging.

There was a noise to his left, little more than a slide of a callused hand on a smooth wooden surface, but it was a sound Xander recognized immediately, and spun to face his father.

He turned just in time to have the approaching fist hit his eye instead of the back of his head.

\---

  
 

Jessica had a plan for her life.

In her teens, she fell head over heels in love with a good man, and dreamed of a white picket fence, a dog, and children running in the yard, laughing and happy as she and the love of her life grew old and gray and fat and happy together, sitting on the front porch and watching their little ones grow up and have children of their own. She went to school, married Tony Harris during the summer between her second and third years, then when she graduated, got a good job as a nurse at the Sunnydale hospital.

They bought a little house on enough credit to make payments for decades, and she tried to go about the main part of her plan – the children – as fast as possible.

But after five years of trying, nothing seemed to be happening.

The twelve hour shifts were getting harder, and Tony, who had been as excited for the idea of having children as she had, was growing more distant in his disappointment. She was beginning to lose hope, and had reached the point where she truly believed that she was never meant to be a mother.

But a single fateful night brought her a chance, and she snagged a spot in the foster program so she could keep little Lavelle Alexander – though when she filed the paperwork, she said his name was Alexander Lavelle, because what kind of mother would she be if she named a little boy a mocking inducing name like _Lavelle_? – and soon she had a little one of her very own. But the joy was short lived. Tony had accepted the idea at first, but he swiftly grew resentful of the fact that little Xander wasn’t _his_ , and he started to throw himself into a bottle.

Jessica tried to be a good mother, she really did, and a good wife, but the more her husband sank deeper and deeper into the hole he was digging for himself, the more she started to slip in after him, just to deal with it. 

Somewhere along the line, she woke up one day and realized she was as deep in that hole as her husband was.

She fought it, of course. She pulled her long shifts, she ordered from that one Chinese restaurant she knew her son liked whenever she could manage it, she kept their little house as clean as she could, and made sure that their bottles were all recycled, if nothing else. She even managed sober days so that she could sit down with Xander and help him with his homework, and her heart still soared whenever he would smile at her. He was her son. Whether she birthed him or not.

It could only be better if only her husband didn’t still feel like Xander wasn’t _his_. Birth didn’t make a family, she really believed.

Sighing softly, she slammed the car door closed, juggling the paper bags and cardboard bucket of the KFC she’d picked up as dinner for the men in her life. She’d left work early today, because they had accidentally booked two of them for the same shift and they didn’t really need them both, so she’d picked up a few things and wanted to surprise her husband and son. It was a nice idea for a Monday evening, she figured.

Yawning, she unlocked the front door, and slipped inside, still juggling the warm food.

The first thing she heard was Tony’s breathing. He always made a hissing sort of puffing sound when he was angry, like he was an asthmatic wheezing for breath. She had heard it hundreds of times in the last twenty years, and it usually meant that her husband was about to lash out in anger at her. But she wasn’t _there_ , so what could he be angry at?

Stepping into the kitchen, frowning, Jessica gasped, and dropped the food. 

The lid popped off of the bucket of chicken, and a few pieces actually fell out onto the floor, but no one noticed.

Tony, overweight and balding, stood with his fists raised in the centre of the room, his face red and sweaty under his remaining black scraggly hair. And halfway across the room, bracing himself on the counter, her son was panting, gasping for his own breath, one eye darkened and swelling shut, his lip split and bleeding. His fingers were gripping the counter tightly, knuckles white, but he clearly had never lifted his hands against the massive man threatening him.

“ _Tony_!” Jessica gasped, horrified. 

He didn’t even seem to realize she was there. He just struck out at her son again, his knuckles sinking into the teenager’s gut and making him double over. Xander let out a gasp, but didn’t make a sound – though the angrily puffing Tony did. “ _You’re no son of mine, you worthless piece of shit_!”

Grabbing her husband’s shoulder, Jessica jerked him back away from Xander, but he just reeled back, not even seeming to realize she was _there_ as he stumbled past her and into the living room. 

Jessica gaped after him for a moment, heart sinking hard, adrenaline screaming through her veins. She’d never thought… 

Xander made a soft sound as he straightened, and she darted to his side. “Xander…”

“M’okay, mom,” he brushed off her attempts to talk to him, and pushed her hands away. He was being more gentle with her than she deserved. She should have known. Should have stopped… “I’m fine. Really. It’s not so bad.” He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing blood on his chin. “You’re home early.”

Jessica stared at her boy – a boy who was far more mature than he should have to be for sixteen – confused. How what that what he cared about?

“And you brought dinner!” He perked up, darting for the bags she’d dropped, scooping them up and talking, mostly to himself, as he did. Scooping up the chicken pieces that had fallen, he was talking to himself about how it was such a waste of good food, and how he was going to have to mourn the loss of so many delicious things, and dumped them reluctantly in the garbage. “Don’t think dad’s in the mood for dinner… you and me, mom? I’ll pull out the Elvis tv trays and everything?”

He glanced at her, surprised to find her pressing her fingers hard against her mouth, tears running down her face. 

“…would you rather the Dukes of Hazzard trays?”

Jessica burst into tears, and threw her arms around her son, crushing him against her chest as she cried into his shoulder.

“Jeez, mom,” Xander said, trying to keep things light. Trying to keep things _normal_. “They’re just tv trays.”

\---

  
 

Despite Xander’s protests that it wasn’t so bad and sure he’d had worse than this before and of course not mom, dad has never done this before, I just get into a lot of fights at school and mom I’m _fine_ it doesn’t even hurt any more can we just go back to normal, Xander was reluctantly holding an ice pack to his swollen eye. After all, it was kind of hard to do the whole ‘you don’t know better than me’ thing when your mother could pull the ‘who’s the nurse here, you or me?’ card.

“Chocolate milk, extra syrup, just like you like it,” Jessica set a glass in front of her son, hands still trembling.

“Thanks, mom,” he mumbled through a mouthful of coleslaw, and swallowed hard before he sipped at the glass, swallowing down a couple hefty mouthfuls. “You don’t have to do this, though.”

“Xander,” she said softly, in a voice that threatened more tears.

“Don’t cry, mom,” he said, quickly, reaching across the little card table she’d set up in the basement to lay his hand over hers, squeezing gently. He’d pointed out that they really didn’t have to hide down here like this, but she seemed fiercely determined to keep him away from Tony. The mother bear syndrome, he guessed. “If you start crying, I’m going to start crying too, and that’s the last thing we need, domino tears.”

Her eyes were still wet, but she laughed almost breathlessly. “Oh, Xander.”

“That’s better,” he grinned at her, trying not to wince at how much that hurt. He’d spent years trying to hide this side of his father’s personality from his mother. She was too fragile as it was. He couldn’t bear it if she started crying, too. “S’good food, mom.”

“I’m glad,” she smiled sadly, “You sure you don’t want more?”

“No,” he grinned again. “If you’re offering more food, this starving teenager is totally accepting all donations.”

Laughing, she started scooping more of the macaroni salad onto his plate. “How long has he been doing this, Xander?”

He halted, fork halfway to his mouth. “...huh?”

“Don’t play that with me, smart boy. I know you heard me,” he voice was light, but her eyes were wet again. “How long, Xander?”

He took a deep breath, eyes on his fork as several of the noodles slid off of it, landing with a wet ‘plop’ on his plate again. “A while, mom.”

“Xander...”

“Since I was about ten or eleven,” he murmured, finally, setting the fork down. It may have been something of a miracle, but he didn’t even feel hungry anymore. “It’s been about five years. Six, I guess, now. He just... you know what he’s like when he gets all drunk and angry... and... then he starts yelling about how I’m not his son.” _This_ looked like it hurt him more than his father’s actual blows had. “And sometimes he hits me.”

Jessica sighed softly, reaching across the table to cup the side of Xander’s neck, brushing her thumb along his jaw, lifting it until he met her eyes. “I have to show you something.”

Xander stood and waited while his mother dug in the closet beside the washing machine, pushing aside bottles of detergent and boxes of fabric softener sheets until she pulled down a large cardboard box. Setting it on the floor by the old, rickety pull out couch, she sat, then patted the space beside her, hopefully. He sat, immediately. Smiling at him, softly, Jessica dug inside, then pulled out a tiny yellow pair of footie pajamas. “I brought you home in these. From the hospital.”

“Those are _tiny_!” He gaped at them, taking them from her hands, turning the pyjamas over in his hands. “I was seriously that small?!”

“Seven pounds, eleven ounces,” she answered, immediately, smiling softly. Proudly. “With a shock of thick black hair that just went everywhere. You were the sweetest baby any of the other nurses at the hospital had ever seen.”

He snorted, and handed the little jammies back. “They say that about every baby, mom.”

“They meant it with you,” she said, confidently, and set them beside her on the couch. Digging through, she tugged out a little plastic anklet, absolutely teeny tiny, and handed it over. “This was yours, too. It was where they put your weight, and your length, and... your name.”

“Oh yeah?” he grinned, and read off, “October 27th, 1979. Seven pounds, eleven ounces, twenty inches. Lavelle Alexander Doe.” He blinked at it, smile fading slightly. “Lavelle Alexander Doe?”

She nodded, quietly.

“I thought Lavelle was my middle name.” He cleared his throat, and wiggled it at her. “And you named me after a deer. A _female_ deer.”

“No, honey.” Jessica was wringing her hands quietly in her lap, smiling nervously, just trying to cover up her anxiety. “Your mother named you Lavelle Alexander.”

“You’re my mom.” He said, bluntly. 

“I’ve raised you, and loved you, and been your mother,” she whispered. “But I never carried you, and I never birthed you. I adopted you, when your mother gave you to me.”

Xander felt like his insides had been scooped out with a melon baller, and filled with large chunks of ice. Everything felt cold and sort of frozen - hell, even gelatinous, like he’d been turned into a giant Xander-shaped jello jiggler with no bones. “...what?”

Jessica pulled a small photo album out of the box next, and opened it carefully. 

On the very front page was a newspaper article, yellowed and worn, aged, but still readable, the headline of the Sunnydale Banner, October 28, 1979, declaring, “ _Woman dies after accident; Newborn son lives_.”

Taking it from his mother, Xander set his finger on the page, running it along under every line as he read aloud with a shaking voice. “Woman dies after accident; Newborn son lives. Mom. Mom, what is this?”

She smiled sadly, but had long given up on the fight to prevent tears now. They were flowing slowly down her cheeks as she reached over to turn the page, showing him a photo of herself, much younger and smiling with a sort of dazed, stunned expression. And in her arms was a small blue bundle. “Your mother was in an accident of some kind. We never found of what, but... they found her on the road, covered in blood, and pregnant. In _labour_. They brought her to the hospital, and they tried to save her, but... she... she resisted. Didn’t want our help, I don’t think. But she had... she delivered, and... and she named her son.” Jessica’s voice cracked. “And then she handed him to me...” She sobbed then, pressing her fingers to her mouth again, leaning into Xander when he pulled her quietly against his side. “And then she died.”

“That’s - that’s not possible mom...” he whispered. 

“That’s what happened,” she hiccoughed, trying to calm down, and mostly failing. “We don’t know what her name was. But she named you Lavelle Alexander, and... I adopted you. And... and I named you Alexander, instead... but... I took care of you. I raised you like... like you were my own. You’re my son, but... when Tony says... he wanted his own sons, and in the end...”

“I get it, mom,” he murmured, trembling slightly. “Why did you never tell me?”

She snuffled, and sat up again, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, awkwardly. “It’s hard to tell your son that he’s not yours.”

“I _am_ yours, mom,” he said, firmly.

“You’re sweet,” she smiled, and kissed his forehead. “But... I was scared. See, I... I filed to be a foster parent, and got in, just to have you. But... I tried to get the official adoption papers in, and nothing happened. No one got back to me. I got scared that... that someday, someone would remember... and come back for you. It was an open case... to find out who your mother was, if she had family somewhere... to find out who your father is. But they never found anything. I thought... I’d wait. Until you were eighteen, maybe, an adult... I guess I always hoped they find _something_ , so I could give you something more than just... nothing.”

“Mom... you’ve given me everything you could,” he smiled at her, and squeezed her in an awkward half hug. “I appreciate it.”

She swatted his arm, lightly, and turned the page to a sketch. “This is her. This is the picture they put in the papers, to see if anyone recognized her.”

It was a pencil drawing of a woman with high cheekbones and a sharp, square jaw, wide and plump lips. Her brows arched in a high, smooth swoop, and her hairline was high on her forehead, swept back and little pieces of it were tied into little braids and beaded tendrils and other pieces with dozens of little feathers woven into the hair. She looked serious and stern, and had some necklace that looked like dozens of circles stacked on top of each other, like one of those ones the African women in the National Geographics Xander used to smuggle in to look at pictures of naked women.

“This is my mother?” He asked, frowning. There was no emotional connection, no surge of _aha, that’s who I am_. It was just a nice picture of a slightly scary looking woman, and that was all it was. 

“Yes,” She murmured. “She didn’t speak English, and she was... frenzied, in her panic. But she was a beautiful woman, Xander, and she was so proud of you. You could tell. She loved you so much, but she couldn’t be with you. And when she - when she handed you to me, I took that as a mission of sorts. To keep you safe. And - and I’ve failed.” Her voice cracked.

“Mom, you didn’t - “ he said quickly, hugging her tighter. “Dad just... sometimes he gets angry. It’s okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay!” She cried.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pressing his face into her greying hair, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. “I’m really sorry mom, I’m really sorry... I didn’t ever want you to know...”

“You shouldn’t have hidden it from me!” Jessica called, hugging him tighter. “Never! I’m your _mother_ , Xander! Please... this is - don’t ever think this was your fault. Please.”

“Of course not, mom,” he smiled, flushed. “Never.”

She looked up at him, face wet with tears, and wiped at her face, carefully, just trying to clean herself up. “Wanna see some more baby pictures? You were tiny. Teeny tiny.”

He laughed breathlessly, and nodded. “Sure. And... can I grab my chocolate milk, too?”

Jessica laughed, tugging the photo album back. “My son. The chocolate fiend.”

“Naturally,” he smirked. “Nurture versus nature, mom! That lady might have had me in the midst of a bloody emergency room, but _you_ raised a brat with a taste for chocolate!”

  
 

\---

Xander had managed to deal with the news well enough to make his mother - no, not really his mother, not actually, but very much his _mom_ still - relax and spend a good night talking until they both fell to sleep. But now that the night was over and he was faced with the harsh light of morning instead of the fuzziness of a bare bulb in a basement, Xander was starting to well and truly wig.

He’d never ended up calling Willow the night before, so he had no idea how the hunt for the thing that was really beating up vampires was going, and _now_ he looked like living hell. The ice, apparently, hadn’t done much good.

His mom was trying to make up for everything. He’d told her it really wasn’t necessary, but she’d still made pancakes and hustled him off to school before his father woke, grumpy and irritable because he would be hungover, like normal.

Xander didn’t fail to notice that she’d slept on the couch, either.

She knew his father’s temper, too.

Only, Xander thought, he wasn’t really his father. At all. Hell, he could actually call him Tony to his face now, and what exactly was the fat bastard going to do about it? Xander wasn’t his son, and Tony wasn’t his father. He’d reinforced that point with his knuckles enough times over the years. Only he was worried that it would disappoint his mom, as angry as she was at Tony now.

And on top of that, there was the whole issue of some mysterious other set of parents. A mother that was only a pencil drawing he felt nothing for and a father that was a blank space. Hell, maybe he had brothers and sisters, even. 

It all felt sort of unreal, and added together to make him feel numb.

Slipping into the Sunnydale High School, Xander found himself sort of wondering if people would look at him differently, as if they knew. But no one even seemed to blink at the sight of him, though a couple winced at the state of his injured face - but looks over injuries, he was used to those.

“Got in a fight with a brick wall again, did you, Harris?”

Cordelia’s cutting voice, as sharp and accurate as a surgeon’s scalpel, cut through his daze, and made him jerk his head up from his locker’s lock - which he’d only been staring at anyway and not opening - to watch her approaching. She looked impeccable as always, in a plaid miniskirt and a maroon sweater turtleneck. She sneered slightly at his appearance, and added, “Clearly the wall won.”

“Actually, I was defending your honour,” he said, flippantly, falling into old habits easily. “This guy said you hadn’t nailed more football players than the entire cast of Debbie Does Dallas combined, but don’t worry, I showed him.”

She scoffed, as though even his insults weren’t even good enough for her, and breezed past him.

Xander watched her go.

He waited until she was gone to unfold the note she’d slipped into his shirt pocket as she’d passed. “ _I have spare second period. Skip and meet me in the Boiler Room_.”

No name signed to the note.

Naturally.

Wouldn’t do for someone to find out about them, whatever their ‘them’ was, anyway.

Xander finally got his locker open, tossing his backpack in and debating the merits of actually grabbing his textbooks for a moment. It wasn’t as though they’d really help, but Mulligan at least, first period, would rag on him if he didn’t have them.

Reluctantly, he shoved the required things in his backpack, and headed to the library. Maybe Giles knew what was going on.

Later, Xander would admit that while pausing at the door to listen before he went in was a bit of a dick move, he would also have to admit that it helped to clarify a hell of a lot for him. Because pause he did, one hand resting lightly on the wood, straining to hear his friend’s voices over the din of the other students in the hall, chattering and laughing. For a long moment, he couldn’t hear anything, but as though someone had suddenly plugged a set of headphones in, their voices became audible, if not clear. 

“You should have seen it, Giles! It was awful!” Willow was saying.

“But Xander acted like it was just nothing. Maybe it was a possession?” Buffy.

“Or a shapeshifter!” Willow said again. She was really hung up on that idea, apparently. “So we sent him home.”

“Yes, well...” Xander could almost see Giles tugging off his glasses and polishing them reflexively on his tie - that man was going to wear straight through his lenses. “While I am certain that everything may have seemed quite awful last night, I really can’t imagine that the situation is as simply black and white as Angel made it seem. This _is_ Xander we are talking about here.”

Xander felt sort of proud, hearing that. You go, G-man!

“You don’t understand, Giles,” Buffy was saying, loudly, fervently. “We can't have him involved in this hunt! What happens if we get the wrong Xander?! And what if it really _is_ a possession, and all of a sudden he goes nuts and tries to kill us? Xander is safer if he stays at home. Maybe he shouldn't even come to school, maybe he should stay at home for awhile. I mean, if he _is_ possessed, and it's actually Xander... Giles, Angel was really afraid. He was afraid of Xander. ”

He blinked. Really? Funny, you’d think he’d have remembered if mom had said his birth name was Kal-El.

“Xander,” Giles repeated, sounding almost as convinced of that as Xander felt. “Angel, the Master Vampire, was scared of _Xander_. Our Xander, even.”

Okay, G-man. Don’t have to defend _quite_ so hard.

“I don't think it was really Xander, I think it was a super strong shapeshifter,” Willow offered.

“Shapeshifter.”

“Yeah!” Buffy sounded way too eager about this. “I mean, it could be true, right? Wills found a whole book about Shapeshifters and stuff, there was one that could copy people so exactly even their own _mothers_ couldn't tell it wasn't really them... and Angel said he was really strong and really kind of animalistic...”

Xander felt cold. He knew Angel had lied about what it was he’d allegedly done, but this was just... too much. It was _insane_.

“That rather sounds like what he was like during the primal possession incident,” Giles said slowly. “And I don’t believe Angel _knew_ about that particular occasion...”

“That’s what we thought!” Buffy said. “That maybe it was something like the hyena! I mean, it might not _be_ the hyena, it might have been something else... I mean, this is the _town_ for possessions, right? And it _could_ be the hyena still...”

“We got it out of him,” Willow reminded her.

“I mean, yeah, we got it outta him, right? But he had to protect me, didn’t he? What if _that_ was a predatory act all over again and all this time, Xander’s had a ticking hyena time bomb in his head, just waiting to _boom_ , go off and make him try to beat the crap out of Angel!” Buffy sounded like she was ready to declare war in defence of her boyfriend, or something. It was starting to scare Xander in a way he hadn’t expected, like there was a dull thrum of alarm in the base of his chest, warning him. “We have to do something, Giles!”

“And what, precisely,” the librarian said, “Do you expect us to be able to do. If this is true - “

“It is!” 

“If this is true,” he repeated, as through she hadn’t interrupted him, “Then that means something terrible has happened. It could be a possession, as you suggest, or a shapeshifter... it will take a _great_ deal of research.”

“I know that,” she said quickly, as though embarrassed. “I wasn’t gonna _slay_ him, Giles. I just made him go home so that he'd be safer. He – he's just human, Giles.”

Ouch. Way to remind him.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Well, we have to find out if he’s possessed, or if there's a shapeshifter don’t we? How would we do that, Willow? What’s the best way to figure out which one it is?”

“Well, I’ve been looking into finding - “ Willow started.

The bell rang, and Xander let out a shout of surprise, reeling back. He’d been so focused on listening in on what was going in the library that he hadn’t even realized that things were still moving on along around him, and it was like all of his focusing had sort of turned up the volume of his ears, so that when the bell rang, it absolutely echoed and bounced about through his brain, making him reel back and press his hands to his ears for a moment.

The few teenagers around him gave him weird looks, but they had to get to class, and seemed not to mind slipping past him to get there. Taking a deep breath, forcing his watering eyes to clear, Xander took several deep breaths, trying to make the ringing fade at least a little, then headed into the library.

All three of the inhabitants looked up sharply when he walked in.

Giles stood up straighter, as though wanting to not look like he'd been talking about him, just in case. 

Buffy crossed her arms, sternly, glowering at him. Yeah, she wasn't happy to see him.

Horror flicked across Willow’s face, and for a moment, he genuinely wasn’t sure if it was because of the state his face was in - banged up and bruised and injured, eyes red and and slightly watery - or because he was _there_ and he wasn't home and being 'safe' like they had told him. 

But then Willow darted towards him, reaching up to touch his jaw, and he knew. “He didn’t, did he?”

“It’s nothing, Willow.” He shrugged one shoulder, awkwardly.

“What happened, Xander?” Giles asked, frowning as he considered the wounds. 

“I don’t want to talk about it, G-man, sorry,” Xander said quietly. And he really didn’t. He hated talking about the problems his father had with him, even if he really owed the man no loyalty. There were some things you still had to keep close and silent and hidden, because that’s what family did, and Jessica if nothing else was his family. 

“Is there a gap in your memory?” Buffy stepped closer, concerned. “Because that could mean possession...”

He gaped at her, then threw up his hands. “Why does everyone think I’m beating up on Angel?! I’m not! I had a shitty enough day _without_ possession involved, thank you very much!”

“Xander...” Giles moved past the table. “We’re just concerned. Something seems to be going on, it could be any number of things... we really need to do more research into this. It will be safer for you if you're home. Just in case something is trying to... be you.”

“What is 'Xander'?” he asked, crossing his arms, fingers twitching on his upper arm, like he was trying to hold himself back. “I don’t even know who I am.”

“Well,” Giles sighed. “I don’t think it’s quite that extreme...”

“No, Giles. I _don’t know who I am_.” Xander said fiercely, shaking slightly. He hadn’t really considered this, before, whether or not he was going to tell his best friends and their mentor everything he’d found out. It hadn’t really crossed his mind, but now that he was here, and they were just being so damn passive aggressive about the whole freaking thing, he just couldn’t seem to stop himself. “I found out last night. I’m adopted.”

“What?” Willow gaped up at him. “... _what_?”

He shrugged, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Mom said my mother was in an accident, and had me right after, and... she died. They never found out her name, even. I don’t know who I am.”

“I read about that,” Giles held up a hand, eyes wide, then darted back towards the shelves, fingers brushing across the spines of the books as he tried to find a specific one, then snatched the leather bound book off the shelf, and headed back, flicking through the pages. “This is one of the Watcher’s Journals... there was a phenomenon... and they gathered information on every incident that had happened that was unusual that night... ah, here we are... you were born on October 27th, 1979?” He glanced up.

Xander nodded, silently.

“ _In the skies over the hellmouth in Sunnydale, California_ ,” Giles read aloud, “ _On the night of October 27th, there was a light. A shooting star that left a trail across the stars, and crashed in the forests beyond the city limits. The meteor has never been recovered._ ” He glanced up, then offered, “They listed everything unusual that happened that night, and one was a woman, bloody and injured, tumbling into the local hospital and having a son before her death. Of course I had no reason to connect that to you.”

“Heh, neither did I,” Xander said weakly.

“So you have no idea who your mother is,” Buffy was looking at Xander with an unreadable expression, frowning slightly. “Or your father.”

He shook his head. “No, I guess I don’t.”

“So one of them could be a demon or something.”

Xander gaped at her. “....excuse me?”

“One of them could be a demon.” She said again, eyes wide and looking completely stunned, like she couldn't quite believe what she was actually suggesting. “You’ve always been a demon magnet, everything in this town seems to want a piece of you, and this _is_ Sunnydale. Hell, you might not even be human.”

His jaw dropped. “Why would you even say that?”

“Okay, clearly you're human, you're our Xander-shaped friend,” she held up her hands. “I'm just pointing out that it could explain a lot of things, like... like your being a demon magnet, and things like people that look exactly like you beating up our friends. I mean, it could be that you have this... thing in you that makes you do this, because of your mother... or... maybe you have an identical twin brother that could have been the one that tried to beat Angel!”

“I don't have- “ he spluttered.

“Buffy, that doesn't seem likely,” Giles sighed. “But Xander, maybe you _should_ stay home for a little while. Stay out of sight of anything that might come hunting. We will talk about this later. Go to class.”

She sighed softly, but scooped up her backpack, and called for Willow, heading for the doors. “Go home and stay safe, Xander. We just want to keep you safe.”

Willow hesitated, looking up at Xander for a moment, as though wanting to stay there with him, she also snatched up her book bag and followed the Slayer out the door. “We're just trying to keep you safe, Xander!” She called behind her.

Xander’s stiffness in his spine didn’t ease even slightly until they were already gone.

“Xander...” Giles started.

“I never touched Angel, Giles,” he said, looking up. “Never. Not once. I hate his guts, but I _never_ touched him. You believe me, right?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I do. Though there is the concern that there could still be a shapeshifter or some kind of possession...”

He sighed, relieved, shoulders fully slumping. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to talk to Angel myself,” he said, firmly. “See what the actual story is. Maybe he will have more insight into what sort of... _copy_ of you has been harming him. But neither I nor the girls believe you are actually capable of this kind of violence, Xander. We're not sure why it's happening, but we know it's not you.”

He nodded, quietly. 

“I’m sorry, Xander,” he rested his hand on the teenager’s shoulder. “For all of this.”

“Hey... the Sunnydale Soap Opera woulda been lame without a few betrayals, lies, beatings, and a surprise adoption thrown in there,” he smirked at the librarian slightly. “I just really knew what the _hell_ is going on. I mean, I don’t like Angel, but...”

“Yes, I have noticed that,” Giles said wryly. “I believe the feeling is returned.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding jerkily. 

“I cannot believe I am suggesting this, but... would you like to help me in the library today? I’ll send Snyder away if he comes sniffing around for why you’re not in class.”

Xander hesitated, and glanced up at him. “Yeah, thanks Giles. I’d like that. Shall I go get donuts?”

The librarian smirked. “No. But I can get you some shelving to do.”

He dumped his backpack on the table, and headed over towards the book cart, mock cheering. “Yaaay. Book me, G-man.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Angel should have been hiding in his little apartment, if he was telling the truth. Cowering and drinking as much blood as he could to recover, and avoiding Xander.

He was sitting on the end of the table in the Warehouse, smirking at Spike, who glowered right back.

“Come on, Sit and Spin,” he mocked, reaching out with his toes to push at Spike’s wheelchair, snickering with the other vampire growled and just rolled himself out of his way. “You can’t say you’re not happy to see me.”

“Oh, I really can.” He shot back, glowering. 

“Temper, temper, Spike,” he smirked. “Your sire’s back… you should be happy.”

“Delirious.” He said dully.

Humming, Drusilla sort of danced into the large room, Miss Edith draped in one of her arms like a baby, twisting one of the curls of the doll’s hair around her finger. She hummed as she slipped past Spike, who had reached for her hopefully as he always did, and instead slipped between Angel’s knees, bumping her hips against his knees as she pressed her forehead lightly against his, sort of a mockery of what she did normally with Spike. The blond vampire watching them seethed.

“My little seer,” Angel smirked, reaching up to cup her jaw with one hand, fingers tangled in her dark curls. “And what have you to see for me today?”

“The little dark kitten has a dark future,” she murmured, curling into his touch like a cat arching into a loving hand. “The stars beg to have him back, and they will have their will done. They demand it. But there will be no white knight.”

“If that means what I think it means, that means it worked,” he grinned, and kissed her firmly. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“The stars say so,” she murmured, all but purring.

“Good.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“You really think this is a good idea?”

Buffy dropped her backpack just outside the white chalk circle Willow had carefully drawn on Buffy’s basement floor and was relieved that she’d thought to lock the door before she headed downstairs. Her mother would completely wig if she came home and discovered that the two of them were doing magic – however good their intentions were – and in her own basement no less. She had no idea what her mother’s reaction actually _would_ be, but she wasn’t picturing sunshine and rainbows. 

“Yeah, Willow, I think this is our only idea, really.” She folded her legs Indian style, hooking both of her feet under her knees, and smiled hopefully at the redhead. “Look, Willow… you love Xander, I love Xander, he’s our Xander-shaped friend. He’s awesome… and lately… something’s been off. Maybe it’s the whole… trying to figure out who he is thing. Or maybe it’s because… he’s possessed or something. But we need to _help_ him, right? Get everything back to normal, and either find the shapeshifter, or find out what he's possessed with. We can fix this.”

“Yeah…” Willow hesitated, biting her lip. “You sure we shouldn’t ask Giles for help?”

“Giles thinks we can just figure this out, Willow,” she said softly. “And we can, but this could be a time sensitive thing. I mean... Xander isn't going to stay at home forever, is he? Something might happen to him because he's kind of likely to try and figure it out himself, and I don't want Xander to get _hurt_ , Willow.”

She nodded, squirming. “Yeah, I know…”

“And you said it was a simple spell,” she reminded her, smiling. “Something little and easy, and… we can find out exactly what's going on, just like that.”

“Well, it should be simple,” she considered the book sitting beside her on the floor, running her finger down the page. “I mean, I’ve looked through the spell like fifteen times, and I pulled up some stuff on the internet… I think I’ve got it focused. Like, more than the original spell was.”

“What was the original spell?” she asked, curiously, squirming a little closer. 

“A heritage spell.” She beamed. “For finding the ancestors. Like… finding out who the target’s mother and father and grandparents and great grandparents and… everything are. Like ten generations back, or something. I think they used to use it for royal succession and things like that. Make sure there were no bastards in the family line and stuff.”

“Willow!” she gasped. 

She flushed bright red. “Bastards in the not legitimate heirs way, not the… insult way. C’mon.”

“Right. I knew that.” Buffy cleared her throat, tucking her hair behind her ears. “So what are you gonna use it for?”

“Well… you remember what you said in the library? That maybe one of his parents could be a demon, or something? Well, what I thought I could do was mix it with an actual supernatural creature identification spell, and so it would tell us who Xander’s parents are… _and_ it would tell us _what_ they are. What if he really _is_ vulnerable to possession because of that? ”

“Smart!” She beamed. “How?”

“Well, it wasn’t so bad, I really only had to replace the dragon’s blood with sunchoke and put extra cloves in for potency, and I had to mix up the symbols a little, because not all of them will actually work for a real identifying spell… they’d really only work for the heritage spell they were meant for, I guess. I think I’ve got it right, though. I think.”

Buffy hesitated. “…nothing’s going to happen to Xander if you _aren’t_ right, is it?”

“Don’t you have any faith in me?” She asked, looking sort of offended and kicked puppy like. 

She winced. “Of course I do. I’m just… you know… worried about our Xander shaped friend, too.”

“Right.” Willow flushed darker. “No, won’t hurt him. Not a single one of the ingredients is dangerous, in _any_ way. Honestly, they’re all pretty common household ingredients. I even borrowed the cloves from my mother’s kitchen, because she always has tons for the meals she always plans to make but never really finds the time to do.”

The Slayer laughed softly, amused, and looked over all the little Tupperware bins of ingredients that Willow had laid out, carefully. “So, do you need me to do anything?”

“Nope. Just hold this paper down,” she offered her a piece of parchment. “I get the impression it might sort of blow away.”

Buffy blinked, and set it down in front of her, pressing her palms down on the edge of the page. “Why would it blow away? And… why do we need it? What’s it for?”

“The information about his parents should show up there,” she grinned, and dug in her backpack for a moment, tugging out a little Ziploc baggie. Reaching in carefully, she drew out a dark brown curl, and laid it almost reverently on the little ‘altar’ she had made with three smooth beach rocks and a large white plate. 

“Is that what I think that is?” Buffy gaped at it.

Willow glanced up, and offered, meekly, “The spell needs a part of the person it’s targeted at… it’s some of Xander’s hair.”

“Why do you have Xander’s hair?” She blinked. “Cause that looks a little stalker-ish. And kinda creepy.”

“When we were eleven, Xander got his head shaved, and I went with him, and he said we needed to keep some of his hair so I wouldn’t forget what he looked like with hair. He was convinced that once he shaved it, he was going to keep his head shaved _forever_ and everything, but after it was done, he found out his head was lumpy, so… he never did it again.” Willow giggled. “But I kinda kept the hair in my scrapbook. It was a good memory, after all.”

“Uh huh.” Buffy nodded, and wiggled her fingers at Willow. “ _Creeeeeepy_.”

“Ha ha,” she rolled her eyes, and carefully placed all the other ingredients she needed around the edge of the plate, perching them on the rim of the plate. 

“So do you need to like… chant in Latin, or something?” Buffy asked, setting her hands on the paper again, considering her. “Or do some kind of funny dance, or… you know, anything like that?”

Willow laughed softly, flushed, and tucked her hair back behind her ears. “Not so much… no, I pretty much have a little prayer to the goddess, and then… light the little smudging stick. That’s all there is to it… pretty easy, really.”

“Easy spells are the best,” she grinned.

“I _completely_ agree,” she laughed, wiggling slightly in her seat, then made sure everything was laid out before murmuring, “ _Goddess, hear my plea. Make clear the path, make clear the way, this unknown history made clear, bring him to his family.”_

Buffy watched, breathlessly, biting her lip.

Willow met her eyes, and smiled, then fumbled with the barbeque lighter for a moment before she managed to light the bundle of sage, and waved it carefully over the little altar, letting it hover over each of the ingredients, one by one.

That done, Willow sat back, and waited. 

Nothing happened.

“Um… is that it?” Buffy looked unconvinced. “I thought it was going to list Xander’s ancestors up to ten generations and tell us if he’s a demon or something. There’s nothing on this page.”

Willow frowned, checking the book. “Yeah, that was it… that was supposed to be it…”

She blinked. “…should we check to make sure Xander hasn’t like… sprouted horns or something?”

“Buffy!” Willow squeaked, offended.

“Well, it didn’t do what it was _supposed_ to do, so… you know… it’s worth a check, isn’t it?”

She pouted. “…I’ll call him.”

“Okay.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander was really hoping that today was going to be better than the last two had been. Between his mother’s bombshell about his parenthood and Angel’s bullshit and Buffy and Willow being all… over-protective and his father being all angry and bitter and drunk, he’d had a shitty forty eight hours, and as far as he was convinced, he deserved a break.

Now, should he perform the math about the _odds_ of giving a break, he’d have to make it something of Angel + Buffy + Willow – Giles + Tony – Jessica + mystery mom x mystery dad all to the power of living on the hellmouth. 

The odds weren’t good. 

And whatever the odds were, in the end it didn’t matter anyway, because Willow was messing about with spells she didn’t really understand and had not only combined sunchoke and cloves in the same spell, she had _increased_ the level of cloves, and maybe the Powers That Be were feeling just a little bit extra vindictive that morning, so Xander did _not_ have a better day than he had been having. In fact, the day was so substantially _worse_ that really it could be in the running for the very worst day of all freaking time.

He’d woken up in the basement again – which wasn’t really his favourite place to sleep, by any means, but Jessica had basically suggested it so that there was less chance of him running into Tony. He didn’t really like it, but pretty much any time she wasn’t at work, his mom came down to spend time with him, bringing dinner and snacks and making sure his cable was working, and bringing him books and videos and comic books. He was pretty sure she’d bought him more comic books in the last two days than he’d gotten in a year. But the problem was, he hadn’t gone to school in two days either because of Buffy's 'wonderful' suggestion that he'd be safer at home, so he was bored nutty and had read all of them. So he’d woken in his new bed, which was the shitty pull out, showered in the little mildewy bathroom, and gotten dressed in clean clothes that had come straight out of dryer, warm and kinda happy. Now if it could just _stay_ that way… it would be perfect.

He ran a brush through his hair, then flopped down on the couch again with a bowl of microwaved potato soup, content.

He just wanted it to stay that way.

There was a knock on the top of the basement stairs, and he glanced up, spoon halfway to his mouth, pausing. “…hello?”

The door opened, and Jessica leaned in. “You decent?”

Xander snorted, and nodded. “Uh huh. C’mon in, mom. Well, unless you think that Star Trek isn’t decent, then I suppose I’m watching filth.”

Jessica laughed softly, and headed down the stairs, sitting quietly on the rickety couch beside him. “How are you doing, honey?”

“Eh… okay.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked, gently. 

“No offence, mom, but I can’t even get it into words in my own head. I think if I tried to get it out in words it wouldn’t make _any_ sense and that would probably hurt more than it would help. I’m just… muddled, I guess.”

She nodded, understandingly, and patted his shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve been thinking that maybe you should go visit your grandma for awhile.”

Xander blinked at her. 

“Xander?”

“It’s the middle of the school year, mom.” He blinked. “She lives in LA.”

“We’d have to transfer you,” she admitted, quietly. “I know that it would be hard, to transfer in the middle of the school year and everything, but… it would get you somewhere safe and quiet, and it’d certainly be better than staying in the basement. This place isn’t really much of a bedroom, is it?”

“I’d call it a crappy little apartment,” he admitted.

“You see?” She smiled slightly. “Besides, grandma loves you.”

He snorted, and leaned on her shoulder. “You just wanna get rid of me, huh?”

“Never,” she said, fervently, almost sharply. 

Xander flushed, and squeezed his mom’s shoulder, gently. “Sorry, I was trying to make with the funnies, you know? So when would I go?”

“Next week, maybe.”

He took a deep breath, considering that. Buffy and Willow and Giles would be thrilled. He'd be out of Sunnydale, he'd be out of the way of their hunting, and most importantly, he'd be 'safe'. He sighed, and said quietly, “Yeah, okay. Does this mean you’re staying with dad, then?”

Jessica winced slightly. “I’m not sure, Xander. I still love your father.”

“I know,” he nodded. “Yeah, you can call grandma, I’d like to stay with her for awhile. So long as I don’t have to, you know, stay with her forever. I’d really not like to end up living in a city away from my friends forever, you know. I got this thing where I finally _have_ some friends these days, I’d like to stick with them.”

She laughed softly. “You’ve always had friends. Jesse, and Willow…”

“And Jesse died, mom.”

“I know,” she murmured, squeezing his hand, and stood. “I’m going to call grandma, okay? See if she’s okay with it.”

He nodded, and set his bowl aside, not really hungry anymore. “Yeah, thanks, mom.”

She ruffled his hair, then hesitated, and said, “It looks like it’s gonna get cold tonight. Maybe you should grab a sweater.”

“Mom, it’s like… eighty degrees out there.”

“Humour me,” she smiled slightly, ruffling his hair again, and heading up the stairs.

Rolling his eyes, Xander stood and dug in the dryer again, tugging out a hoodie and tugging it on over his bright yellow and orange coloured Hawaiian shirt, making his hair stick up in every direction. He took a deep breath, about to take another step, then staggered. 

His head was spinning, and his gut clenched, like someone had just wrapped their hand around his insides and twisted, tightly. 

Taking another step, his knees sagged, and Xander drew in a sharp breath, gripping tightly at the washing machine, trying to keep himself on his feet, steady and strong. Except that seconds after he squeezed the metal surface, the washing machine just wasn’t there for him to hold onto anymore, and he tumbled towards a floor that simply wasn’t there anymore and he started free falling.  
  
[The Pool of Tears](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/46862.html)  


 

 

 


	3. White Rabbit - The Pool of Tears

  


  
**White Rabbit - The Pool of Tears**

 

 

The prison colony known as Butcher Bay had a few problems.

One was the mines, and the particular prisoners who sort of “ruled” them. The second problem was the sheer level of corruption among the guards – prison guards weren’t really much more than mercenaries themselves, and half the men in the slam _were_ mercenaries at some point in their lives, so they all held to the Greed is the Creed and they sort of turned a blind eye to most of the goings on in the prison. Third was the greedy mercs bringing in the prisoners, who sometimes thought they were entitled to more than what the warden Hoxie really thought was their fair share. Fourth was all the dead prisoners and guards, but that didn’t really matter so much – so long as they were still on the books, they weren’t _officially_ dead, and they could still collect on them. The fifth problem was a new one, and it was a doozy.

It was Richard B. Riddick.

Convict and known murderer, the tall bald man had a hefty bounty on his head, so Hoxie had been more than pleased to have the mercenary Johns bring the man to him. Paying Johns had been somewhat of a different matter, but that was besides the point. Riddick had escaped from an unknown number of slams before, so naturally they didn’t want him to leave their triple-max slam.

Unfortunately, Riddick seemed rather _determined_ to escape their triple-max slam.

And the worst problem of all right now was that he seemed to be doing it.

It was generally accepted, as a rule, that no one escaped from Butcher Bay. No one ever had, and they really had no reason to except that to change, not really. After all, the place was a fucking maze built over an old mine that made the prison look like child’s play and the greedy guards were all too happy to “take care of problems”. But Riddick had worked systematically through every level of their defences, and gods, he’d even commandeered a fucking Mobile Armoured Unit.

It probably didn’t help, either, that he’d somehow gotten Johns, the fucking mercenary that had brought him in the first place, to help him!

Hoxie really had to learn who he was fucking with.

“Can you see anything?” Danvers shouted through his mouthpiece, not because the headsets were quiet but because he’d been so deafened by his own machine gun fire he could barely hear himself speak,

“I can’t see shit!” Garwin hollered back. “Simms! What d’ya got!”

“He’s pinned down Parry and Pope’s MAU’s, can’t tell how the integrity is. But I think they got some hits in.”

Danvers shifted, cradling the hot machine gun as close as he dared. “He’s gotta get outta the MAU eventually! Simms, you got clear line of sight?”

“That’s a negative, captain, he’s – fuck! Opening hatch!”

Swearing in every language he knew how to in – which was considerably more languages than he could actually speak in – Danvers jogged to the edge of the doorway that lead to the room they’d mostly pinned Riddick down in, using the scope to survey around the edge of the corridor.

He didn’t even see it coming.

“Captain! Captain! Come in!” Simms bellowed. He might have not had direct line of sight, but he had enough of an eye on the occurrences that he could see Danvers twitching on the floor, a swiftly spreading pool of blood under his head.

There was, naturally, no response.

A tall, bald man with an odd, tightly fitted pair of black goggles stepped out over Danver’s now-still body, and fired in their direction. Simms ducked in time, but that didn’t save him from hearing Garwin’s agonized screams as his friend’s body was ripped apart by gunfire. He’d seen more than his fair share of death in his life, but Garwin was his gods damned _friend_.

He roared and swung out of his alcove, gun raised to take retribution, but Riddick was already running, heading for the light of day.

He set chase.

There was a crunch to his left, and Simms spared a glance just enough to see Parry tumble out of his damaged MAU and run to catch up with him, gun drawn.

“Bastard’s heading for a dead end,” Parry rasped, voice crackling on the head set even though he was right beside him.

“Drive the bastard off the edge,” Simms growled, firing just short of Riddick himself.

The convict actually glanced back at them, and he sneered.

“Just shoot him off!” Parry snapped, and fired, but Riddick was already moving, already leaping off the edge of the balcony to a sure death. Only it wasn’t a sure death, he landed, light and nimble as a jungle cat in combat boots on the topside of a prison shuttle.

Someone roared their frustration, and it took Simms a moment to realize it was himself.

“Riddick!” Someone inside the shuttle bellowed. “Get in here!”

“Johns,” the convict muttered, and dropped himself in through the open entryway hatch, which started to close as the shuttle drifted away from the building, out of the reach of their mid range weapons.

“Parry,” Simms barked, taking over command now that Danvers was dead. “Get me a fucking baby nuke.”

Riddick landed lightly on the balls of his feet, and walked almost leisurely forward to lean on the back of John’s seat, completely ignoring the gun the man had aimed at him. “Told you. Hoxie remembered.”

“Shut the fuck up, Riddick. I’m taking you to a different slam. And for this, I better get fucking bounty plus seventy five. At least.”

“Tsk tsk. Greedy.” Riddick grinned crookedly, a sort of twisted almost smile. “We leaving, or we having a tea party?”

“We are leaving,” Johns snapped, gloved fingers still slightly clumsy on the controls – probably still on the dose, something that gave Riddick a deep jolt of pleasure. He rather liked when the bastard suffered.

“So what’d they do to you, Johns?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he snapped again. “I’ll beat the shit out of you later. Now. Back in the chair like a good little convict before something else unusual hap – “

Ironically, Johns never finished that statement.

Because something unusual happened.

There was no sound, no flash of light. Thunder didn’t roll and lightning didn’t crackle – hell, there wasn’t even enough static in the air to let someone rub their feet to get a charge. Just one moment, Johns was aiming a gun at Riddick while the convict gave him a look of ‘you really want to test me on this?’ and the next, Riddick was on the ground, a third person sprawled on top of him.

Riddick moved immediately, of course, flipping this stranger over off of him, hand raised to slam his elbow down into his face. The kid didn’t even flinch, just swung his arm up, knocking Riddick’s aside – he’d hesitated, why the fuck had he hesitated? – and scrambled back, far less gracefully.

The kid – all gawky, long limbed teenager awkward – bolted to his feet, eyes flicking every direction at once as he tried to take in every detail – the shuttle around them, Johns still sitting with the gun still at the ready, Riddick rising to his feet, expression murderous. He took another step back, chest heaving as he breathed hard, but hadn’t otherwise made a sound.

“What is this?” Johns did the talking for the other two, who were still both silent. “A stowaway? Fuck, Riddick, he even got the jump on you!”

Riddick growled, and the kid’s eyes flicked back to him. For being an idiot trying to stow away and dropping right on the head of the badass motherfucker himself, at least the kid knew how to read a threat.

Apparently not well enough, though, because he didn’t back down when he realized who he was looking at, and instead lifted his chin, staring Riddick down.

“Oh man,” Johns half rose. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

But Riddick didn’t leap on him and beat some respect into him like Johns expected.

He did something so incredibly unusual that Johns actually wondered for a moment if he had the wrong convict in his hold.

Riddick dropped to one knee in front of the boy, lowering his head.

“What the - ?!”

The only consolation was that the kid looked as alarmed by what Riddick was doing as Johns did. “Um,” he said, finally speaking. “I don’t know who the hell you are, where the hell I am right now, but this is really not helping the not freaking out thing, right here.” He actually offered Riddick his hand then, wide eyed. “But really, I’m not like the Stay Puft man god, or anything. C’mon, _get up_.”

Riddick’s head snapped up, eyes still hidden behind those damn goggles as he glared back, then he slapped the kid’s hand away and stood. He visibly was refusing to even _look_ at him.

“What the _hell_ was that?!” Johns roared, throwing up his hands. “What shit was _that_ , Riddick?!”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the kid said, confused.

Johns barked with laughter. “This a new thing for you, Riddick? Slam changed you, now you can only get off if you get on your knees first?”

“Shut up,” Riddick shoved the kid, then, knocking him back so he landed with a thump and a hard exhale of breath, in the seat Riddick had been ordered to take just moments before by Johns. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, Johns.”

“What, now we’re taking the kid?!” he snorted.

“I have a name, you know,” the kid snapped, then hesitated. “Oh right, but you have no idea what it is. Well, it’s Xander. My name is Xander. And where the _hell_ are we, by the way?”

Before anyone could answer that question – whether they were going to or not was a different issue entirely – the entire shuttle was rocked, and they all had to grab onto something to avoid falling over. John’s gun went skittering away from him, and he cried out in pain, nearly collapsing.

Riddick sort of halfway caught him, then shoved him away before slipping into the pilot’s seat, fingers flying across the controls.

“What are you doing?” Xander asked, half rising from the seat.

“What does it _look_ like I’m doing?” he growled.

“Crashing into a big window,” Xander said a moment later, then his eyes widened, and he sat back down quickly, grabbing onto something to hold onto. “Fuck! You _are_ flying us into a window!”

“Very observant,” he growled, and smashed the shuttle straight into the plate glass window at the front of the Warden’s office.

There was a sick crunching sound that seemed to go on and on as pieces of the shuttle crumpled in some places, and pieces of the wall they were colliding with in others. The front window spider-webbed out when a girder struck it, but it still held together, somehow, until their progress was halted, and Riddick slammed the gangplank open. He scooped the barely conscious Johns off the floor and threw him over his shoulder. He didn’t acknowledge Xander when he headed out of the shuttle, but he also didn’t argue when Xander bolted up and followed closely behind.

Hoxie gaped at them as they basically entered the office from the most unconventional route possible, and took another couple steps back. “Riddick, wait…”

“If you wanted Johns dead, you didn’t do a very good job of it,” Riddick dropped the bounty hunter then, ignoring his groan. “I coulda done better with my eyes closed.”

“Come on, Riddick…” the man cajoled, holding out his unarmed hands. “We can work this out. I don’t want any trouble, and I know you must want _something_ …”

“I wanted to be left alone,” he snarled, teeth bared.

Xander tripped over a chunk of debris created by the rather abrupt shuttle entry, and yelped, catching himself on the desk. Hoxie glanced at him, startled, and Riddick used that moment to reach across the desk, grab Hoxie by the front of that damn uniform of his, and jerk him forward over the desk. “What I want _now_ , Hoxie, is the codes to your ship.”

The warden blanched. “My ship, Riddick, wait, you know no one ever escapes Butcher Bay…”

“Not the time,” he growled, not even looking up when Johns stood, groaning slightly.

“Th-they’re in my desk.”

Riddick didn’t even move. “Kid!”

“ _Xander_ ,” he sighed, with a sort of air of long-suffering.

“Whatever. Go in the desk, find the codes.”

To his credit, Xander didn’t start babbling questions until he was already digging in the desk drawers. “So what am I looking for, here? A piece of paper with a bunch of numbers, or am I looking for something a little more high tech, what with the fact that you fly crazy floating machines and – I think I found it.” He held aloft a small digital data pad, and Riddick nodded, sharply. “Sweet. I’m useful.”

Johns snorted at that idea, pressing his hands into his lower back. “Dammit.”

“Johns,” Riddick growled. “Can you walk?”

“…yeah, dammit, I think so.”

“Run?”

“Let’s not push it now,” the bounty hunter grinned briefly. 

Riddick frowned, then pointed at the floor next to him. “Kid. Here.”

“ _Xander_ ,” he said again, but moved around the desk to stand beside the hulking muscular man. He looked sort of silly standing beside him.

Riddick reached up, setting a hand against the back of Xander’s neck. “He ain’t a convict.”

Xander blinked. “Hell no!”

Hoxie swallowed thickly, looking rapidly back and forth between Xander and Riddick. “No.”

“What is he, then? One of your slaves?”

“Oi!” the subject of the question yelped, as though offended by the insinuation.

Hoxie shook his head, frantically. “No slaves here.”

“One of your whores, then?” Riddick sneered, and tightened his grip on the back of Xander’s neck before he could protest again, warning him.

“I’ve never even seen him before!” The Warden howled, starting to look like a pathetic animal, shaking in Riddick’s grip.

Xander’s nose crinkled then, and he murmured, “Gross. He’s pissed himself.”

Riddick didn’t even acknowledge the comment, though based on his expression, he’d observed the same thing. “Well, that’s changing as of right now. You recognize him. He was your favourite. Your _very_ favourite bitch, Hoxie. And it’s gonna give me _very_ great pleasure to take him away from you. Got it?”

Hoxie nodded, quickly, still shaking.

“Good.” He released Xander then, and jerked the other man right over the desk. “Johns, keep a bead on him. Kid. Help me strip a couple of the guards.”

Xander gaped at him for a moment. “Xander. And you’re serious.”

“ _Now_.”

“Right. Now. Of course,” Xander scrambled to help.

Together, they silently stripped two of the guards that had been lying dead and bloody outside the office, though it wasn’t clear at this point if Xander was silent because he was now afraid of Riddick’s retribution if he wasn’t, or because he was trying to stomach the fact that he was stripping dead soldiers naked.

He _did_ start talking, though, when Riddick handed him one of the uniforms and ordered him to put it on.

“No wait, no way, not happening. We just took that off a _dead guy_! Like, not even undead, cause then he’d probably deserve it, but a full on _dead_ guy, blood and guts and all! I mean, that’s not even _close_ to sanitary!”

“If you want to get out of here alive, Xander,” Johns called lazily, from where he was sitting on Hoxie’s desk, “I’d do what he says.”

Xander grimaced, but reluctantly started pulling on the uniform, copying Riddick.

“Hurry up,” he snapped, already dressed.

“Why are you dragging me along, anyway?” Xander demanded, though he did hurry up, and didn’t even complain when Riddick buckled his chest shield on for him.

“Because I promised Hoxie I was taking you from him,” he grinned wolfishly. “And I like keeping my promises.”

“But I really _don’t_ even know that guy!” Xander protested, following him as Riddick marched over to the desk and hauled Hoxie up, forcing him into his chair. As Riddick tied the Warden in so it looked like he was holding John’s gun, he kept going. “When he said he’d never even seen me before, he was telling the truth.”

“Is that so?” Riddick growled.

Hoxie started nodding, fervently, then saw the expression on Riddick’s face, and quickly changed to shaking his head.

“Oh, come on!” Xander threw up his hands. “He’s gonna kill you anyway, why are you playing into this weird fantasy thing of his?”

Hoxie whimpered.

“You liked fucking his whore ass, didn’t you?” Riddick growled.

“Hey!” Xander squeaked, bright red.

Truly shaking now, Hoxie nodded.

“Say it!”

“I liked fucking his whore ass!” Hoxie howled.

“You sick fuck,” Riddick ground out, then tightly gagged the warden with a scrap of one of the uniforms they’d stolen, then straightened to tug his black goggles off.

“Holy shit!” Xander gasped, startled, gaping up at the man’s eyes – silver and glowing dimly, with no pupil, as though his eyes were made of mercury. “Why’re your – “

“Not now,” Riddick tugged the goggles – not gently – onto Hoxie, then set on the helmet that went with the rest of his uniform. “Johns. You’ll have to lead me.”

“Gonna cuff me, too?” he grinned.

“Yes. Kid.”

“ _Xander_ ,” he sighed, and grabbed the cuffs off his belt, cuffing the mercenary’s offered hands in front of him. “What do you think? Believable?”

“No,” Johns smirked, but still nudged Riddick with his hip, waiting for him to put his hand on his shoulder.

Xander huffed, but followed. “We just leaving him there like that?”

Riddick didn’t answer, but as they walked down the hall – and at a completely believable pace for two guards escorting a prisoner – they heard one of the guards rushing past them order: “Riddick’s the one with the goggles. Soon as you set sights on him, you fire!”

“ _Oh_ ,” Xander breathed, getting it now, and didn’t even wince when he heard the distant gunfire.

\---

  
 

The chair was one of the most diabolical things Xander had ever seen.

The person ‘sitting’ in it – a term he used loosely because it was hardly the most comfortable seated position he’d ever seen – was forced into a blocky bench like seat with arms. Their ankles and wrists were both strapped down into it, then another steel band went across the chest, another across the throat, then two more to hold the head in place – one across their eyes, the other across their mouth. It blocked vision, proper eating, and all movement. It was a fate he wouldn’t even wish on Spike. Not even _Angel_.

But he was kinda glad the big scary guy who liked calling him a whore was stuck in it.

Honest truth?

Guy kind of scared him.

Even if he bowed to him. _That_ part was just kind of cool.

Xander twisted in his seat again, frowning as he peered back at the cargo bay where the seat was located, leaning his cheek against the side of the seat as he considered the man sitting in the diabolical seat thing. He still managed to look just as terrifying sitting there as he did when he was free. 

“Problem, Xander?”

He jumped slightly, and glanced over at Johns, who was leaning with one arm draped along the edge of the instrument panel, considering Xander with a smirk. The mercenary had finally taken off his body armour, apparently feeling that Xander wasn’t much of a threat, but was still dressed in almost military style clothes. 

“Naw,” Xander said quickly. “No problems.”

“You’re staring at my bounty like you’re trying to figure out what makes his head tick.” Johns grinned, leaning back, casually. He looked remarkably comfortable, all things considered. “I doubt you’ll be able to do it.”

He snorted. “Prob’ly not. He’s a little complicated, huh?” 

Johns snorted. “Understatement.”

“What’s his name?” he asked, looking back into the cargo bay again. Things had really been sort of chaotic in the last several hours since he’d started out in his basement in Sunnydale, been dropped down hard on top of the crazy muscular insane man, and sort of being rescued by the same insane man. He’d only caught that the mercenary’s name was Johns because the other kept _calling_ him that. It worked.

“Richard B. Riddick,” Johns shifted to dig in one of the metal drawers that lined one of the walls, and offered Xander a foil wrapped package.

“Richard B. Riddick.” He repeated, taking it slowly. “That doesn’t sound badass.”

“He’s just a big pussy cat.” He snorted, smirking as he unwrapped a foil wrapped package of his own. It revealed a dark coloured square of something that he bit into, and tore a chunk off, chewing methodically. “Riddick’s just a big ol’ teddy bear.”

Xander blinked at him for a moment, then glanced back into the hold again. “…if you consider him a teddy bear, I don’t want to know what your childhood was like.”

Johns barked with laughter, shaking his head. 

Smirking slightly, relieved, the teenager carefully peeled open the package he’d been given, and sniffed at the contents. It was a strange texture, the bar inside, almost hard and almost soft, like a sponge that had been allowed to dry out. It smelled sort of gamey, like beef jerky, but a curious little nibble at the corner told him that it tasted more like dried fruit than like meat. He considered it for a moment, then took another bite of it, a bigger one, and chewed away at the leathery concoction, thoughtfully. “So why do you have a bounty out on him, then? What’d he do?”

“You sure you don’t already know?”

Xander blinked at him, chewing. “…huh?”

Johns smirked slightly, and took another bite of his own bar, chewing for a few moments. Finally, he said, “Wanted for murder, assassinations, and a good half dozen jail breaks.”

“Like he just did back there.”

“Yeah, though this one was a bit different than the others,” Johns considered that for a moment. 

“Oh yeah?” Xander frowned, still chewing. This stuff was worse than beef jerky or fruit leather, it was easily the most chewy thing he’d ever encountered in his life, and he just kept seeming to have to chew and chew and chew and he wasn’t getting any closer to finally swallowing. “How come?”

“Ain’t never seen him _rescue_ someone before.”

He blinked at him, still chewing. “…huh?”

Johns rolled his eyes. “He rescued you, Xander. Not in a way that most people might try to rescue someone, but he’s not a ‘most people’ kind of person, you know what I mean?”

“Ah,” Xander considered that, finally swallowing. “Hm.”

“What, you _normally_ get rescued by a guy calling you a whore so that he has an _excuse_ to rescue you?”

He hesitated, considering that. “No, not normally. But out of all the rescues I’ve had in my life, I can’t even say it’s the weirdest one. I know that’s nuts, I know it is, but… that’s the way it is.” He shrugged, and took another bite of the bar, chewing and trying not to get it stuck in his teeth. The weird texture was starting to grow on him. 

Johns snorted, leaning back in his seat as he considered Xander, thoughtfully. “So what makes you so special, then?”

“Oh, I ain’t special,” Xander said through his mouthful of chewy food. “Just kinda lucky.”

“Lucky doesn’t make Richard B. Riddick, the Killer of Men, _the_ Riddick, _bow_ to you. There ain’t nothing I’ve ever seen that would make Riddick bow to anyone. So what makes you special, Xander?”

He shrugged, flushed. “Honestly, I dunno. I’m _not_ special, Johns.”

“You sure? Cause dropping Riddick to one knee, getting him to _rescue_ you from a slam, fuck, even make the rescue _personal_ , that ain’t normal. That’s damn well special, somehow.”

“Well, I dunno why.”

“So we should ask him,” Johns pushed himself up out of his chair, taking a long moment to just breathe, steady himself, then nodded, and headed back towards the rest of the ship. It wasn’t a particularly _large_ ship, all things considered, but Johns had said earlier that it was nicer than his old ship, and that the big chair thing Riddick was strapped into was ‘nicer’ than the one he had before. Xander suspected that meant that the chair was more secure or more nasty. Because he certainly didn’t think that it was a _nice_ chair. Still. 

Xander reluctantly followed, holding the food bar awkwardly as he did, hovering just a touch behind the mercenary as the other man stood in front of the chair, kicking the small space between Riddick’s ankles. “Wake up, killer.”

“Fuck off, Johns,” he growled, coldly.

“Sorry, no can do,” he smirked, leaning on the chair itself, and actually flicking his fingers at the bald man’s forehead. Ridddick didn’t even flinch. “This is really starting to bother me, this whole… ‘why are you bowing to this nobody kid’ thing. What’d he do to make you want to _bow_ to him?”

The man didn’t answer.

“I’m pretty sure,” Xander cleared his throat, “That he _didn’t_ want to bow to me.”

Johns snorted, and poked Riddick’s forehead again, firmly, before heading back up towards the front. “C’mon, Xander, kiddo. Come get yer ass up here… I want to keep an eye on you, just in case.”

“In case of what?” he called back, biting the inside of his cheek. He took a step closer to the chair, realizing that if he looked down at the man bound into the metal chair that he could see his eyes under the metal strap that passed in front of them, considering the closed eyelids, quietly. He swallowed, biting his lip for a moment as he took another step closer. 

“In case you do anything stupid!” he called back. “So get up here, Xander!”

“Be there in a second!” Xander called, stepping even closer to Riddick, his knee caps just brushing the other’s, then unwrapped the last piece of the food bar he’d been chewing on earlier, and squirmed it awkwardly under the metal bar that was placed across Riddick’s mouth. “Please don’t bite my fingers off,” he said quietly, pretty sure that this man could do this if he wanted to. “But here, have a little food.”

“Xander?” The bounty hunter barked. “What’re you doing?”

“Nothing!” he called back, quickly, taking a step back from Riddick, then froze.

The man’s silver eyes were open, gleaming dully in the half shadows cast by the odd lighting of the cargo hold. Xander shivered, and swallowed, then quickly darted into the front of the ship, not even noticing that the convict had started slowly chewing, eating the piece Xander had given him.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Why are we doing this again?” 

“Because we’ve got at least another few weeks to go, and I am _not_ about to let you wander about the ship while I’m sleeping,” Johns smirked, using the Velcro straps to pin Xander’s wrists down to the arms of the large chair. “So you go in cryo too.”

“What’s cryo?” he frowned, slightly, wriggling his fingers. Xander already didn’t like the fact that he was being pinned down into this chair. It might only be a Velcro strap, and he knew that he could probably very easily break free of it, but even the idea of being pinned bothered him a lot. So he wriggled a little, just testing the strength of the straps. 

“Cryogenic frozen sleep.” Johns answered, and swatted his arm. “Quit moving. The straps are there to keep you from falling out of your seat.”

“…I’m not about to fall out of my seat.” Xander blinked at him.

“You might, in cryo.” He smirked, flipping a glass and metal “cage” over Xander’s arm, latching it quickly. “In a minute, these needles will go into your arm… it’ll take your blood out and replace it with a frozen mix.”

Xander gaped at the bounty hunter. “It’s going to _take my blood out_?”

“Yeah, well… your blood wouldn’t freeze properly.”

“Freeze.”

He rolled his eyes. “Cyrogenic _frozen_ sleep. That’s how it works, Xander… how have you never heard of cryo? What the fuck planet are you _from_? Everyone’s heard of cryo. Everyone I know has been _in_ cryo. It’s what people _do_ , the trips are too long to just sit around and do nothing. We probably got four weeks left before we reach the next prison colony… I’ll drop you at the civilian colony. Do what you want after that.”

Xander frowned, squirming in his seat slightly, frowning at the needles, which were still above his skin, not yet punctured into his arm. He really didn’t want the needles. 

“What? Now you’re looking like a kicked puppy.”

He flushed. “I don’t know anyone else.”

Johns rolled his eyes. “You don’t know _anyone_? Where’s your family, then?”

Xander hesitated, and just shrugged. Technically, he had no idea. And he’d had a look at the star charts that Johns was using for his navigation, there were hundreds of dozens of planets scattered throughout the verse, and Johns had explained that they were _all_ populated. There were _so_ many more humans out there than Xander had expected, and now he had no idea how in the world he was going to get _home_.

The mercenary considered him for a moment, then shook his head. “Well, find yourself someone to know, then. Once we hit Tangiers, I’ll be leaving you.”

“Yeah, I’d probably cramp your style,” Xander joked lamely.

He snorted, and slapped Xander’s shoulder. “Be glad I ain’t planning on just leaving you in the colony with Riddick. Might help you meet some new people if you end up in a slam.”

He crinkled his nose. “No thanks.”

“What, don’t want a slam, or you still scared of Riddick?” Johns smirked. He looked entirely diabolical. “I don’t think he’d kill you, I think he’s more likely to drop on his knees in front of you. Hell, maybe you _ought_ to go to the slam with him, that’d pretty much just _make_ your reputation, if you end up in a slam with _Richard B. Riddick_ as your slam bitch.”

Xander gaped at him.

Johns barked in laughter, and glanced back in the hold, bellowing, “Ain’t that right, Riddick? He’d be set if you did that little bowing thing of yours in a slam?”

There was no response from the hold, but that didn’t make Johns stop laughing. He still thought it was hilarious. He shook his head, and patted Xander’s shoulder. “All right, cryo. I’m sick of talking to you.”

Xander rolled his eyes. “I’ve heard _that_ one before.”

Johns smirked, and depressed a red button on the edge of that glass and metal cage, and several needles jolted down quickly into the soft skin on the inside of Xander’s forearm, making him jump slightly in surprise. They were much thicker needles than he had expected, and were _cold_ inside his arm. He hissed, shifting slightly, trying to deal with the sharp sting of the needles. “Does it always go so _hard_?”

“Yeah,” the bounty hunter snorted.

Swallowing, he looked down at the needles, eyes widening as he watched his own blood slide up through the plastic tube connected to the needle, and gasped softly. He could _feel_ it, could _feel_ his blood being slowly syphoned out of the needle and into the tube, like someone had slammed a vacuum cleaner into his veins. It was even worse when there was a little jolt and a blue-white fluid slid out of the other tube into his veins, shuddering. “It’s cold,” he murmured.

“It’s supposed to freeze you,” he rolled his eyes.

Xander leaned back in the seat, starting to feel sort of weak and dizzy, like sleep was slamming down on him quickly, like he’d been put under for surgery, or something. He’d had that for dental surgery once, and he hadn’t liked it then. 

Eyes heavy, he leaned back, and murmured, “S’not going to kill me, is it? Like turn me into a full on frozen ice man or anything?”

He snorted. “Just go to sleep, Xander.”

He nodded, slowly, and sighed gently, eyes falling completely shut, slipping into a forced sleep that he really didn’t want to be in, but was unable to resist. But he still looked anxious, somehow, stiff, like he was sleeping but badly.

Johns considered him for a moment, then shook his head, and headed back into the back to put Riddick in cryo.

  
 

\---

_You don’t dream in cryo_.

Xander wasn’t sure when Johns had said that, but he was sure it had to have been Johns, because he didn’t remember saying that _himself_ , Riddick would hardly have given him so comforting as a moment of conversation, and Xander was pretty sure that before he ended up travelling with his two bizarre companions, that he had never heard the term ‘cryo’ before. 

Of course, had Xander been someone more like, oh say, Giles, he might have assumed that the mercenary was wrong, because there he lay in cryo, dreaming. But that wasn’t exactly what Xander was thinking.

He was really wondering when in the world he’d gotten himself tangled up in all of this and was it too late to go back to his quiet, vampire slaying life, now?

He was dreaming of running through a forest, ducking under branches and around thick tree trunks, trying to not get beaned by leaves to the face - he was pretty sure he was mostly failing - all while trying to prevent whatever it was that was chasing him from actually catching him. Xander had had many a ‘I’m being chased through a strange environment’ before in his life. He’d never really figured out if it was a side effect of being friends with the Slayer, because he got a lot more of them after she’d moved into town, or if it was just part of the wondrous fun that was living in Sunnydale, California. But he wasn’t _in_ Sunnydale, now, and he doubted the Slayer really had much to do with this dream. 

In his dream - and was it really weird that he _knew_ he was dreaming? Weren’t you supposed to feel like it was real, and never really know you were dreaming when you were? - his hands were covered in blood. It wasn’t his own, he didn’t think. He’d been worried at first that maybe it meant he’d been turned, but he didn’t _feel_ like a vampire. 

Not that this was much of a comfort, not really. He’d never been one before, so he didn’t really know what it felt like to be a vampire.

But he didn’t think being dead would feel so _alive_.

His heart was pounding so loudly in his chest he felt like it was about to punch through his rib cage and go on running ahead of him through the ferny and mossy undergrowth, so loud he could feel it in his ears, ripping through everything else he might have heard out there in the forest, like birds or predators or whatever the hell it was that was chasing him. It wasn’t a _bad_ pounding, though, that was the thing. It wasn’t like he was scared, or that it was that fast panicky staccato he’d get whenever a fledge pushed their way out of the ground and lurched towards him. It was like a rush of adrenaline had poured through him, crackling like electricity through his system, almost like he had been slapped with those shock paddles they used at the hospital. It was like a rush. 

He was laughing as he launched himself off a large rock, flying through the air for a moment before he landed in a crouch, and didn’t even wait to catch his footing before he was running again.

Xander was being chased.

And he loved it.

Dashing through the trees, wind whipping at his hair, sunlight slipping light and almost faded through the leaves at him, he ducked under a branch, and burst out over the top of a rise. There, he barely managed to grab a branch and halted himself immediately, his stomach lurching for one brief moment of free-fall before his grip on the branch pulled himself back and he was able to just look over the edge of the cliff he’d nearly fallen off of, instead. 

Panting now, the exercise catching up to him, Xander peered over the edge into the yawning gap below him. He seemed to be standing on the edge of a massive crater in the earth, like the stretching mouth of a starving earth giant.

“Saarlac pit,” he muttered, considering it, the jagged stones inside, the distant sound of rushing water. “Least it’s the original, not the re-mastered version.”

A branch snapped somewhere behind him, and Xander’s head snapped up. 

Another branch, and there was no longer any doubt that whatever was after him was not only now very close - but that they wanted him to know that he was being followed. He hissed slightly, and wrapped his fingers around the branch of the tree, hauling himself up slightly by the branch like it was a chin up bar. He wasn’t nearly as graceful as, say, Buffy would have been, but he was still able to haul himself up, arms shaking only the tiniest amount as he strained to lift himself, almost surprising himself when he got his knees onto the rough bark and stood.

It was short work, then, to haul himself up onto the next branch, then the next, until he was as high as the branches would support his weight, leaning on the thicker trunk as he looked down at whatever had been stalking him.

It was a man that emerged from the bushes.

And not just any man, either, Xander noticed, but a man with a velvet-soft-smooth bald head and a pair of black goggles that weren’t on his ice-glass-bright blue covering the darkest deepest depth eyes, but braced on his forehead so that Riddick could lean on the base of the tree trunk and look up at him with casual ease, with those piercing eyes of his looking straight through the scant cover the paper thin barely green leaves provided.

He met Xander’s eyes, piercing blue meeting whiskey amber, and smirked, a single eyebrow quirking. 

His heart jumped with a quick, adrenaline fuelled _pitter pat_ in his throat, then Xander called down, “So, are you coming up to get me, or are you just going to stand there until I get tired and decide to come down?”

Riddick didn’t answer - but he did grab the tree branch just over his head and swing himself up onto it.

Letting the tree trunk out of his fingers, Xander slowly worked out away from it onto the edge of the branch, which swayed and bobbed under his weight, as though it wasn’t really sure it could support him or not. The more he moved away, the further he was getting out over the gaping pit that waited like it was hoping to swallow him up. Moving out meant that he could hear the water below even louder, crashing over the stones and rushing away back into the underground river that fed it. 

The other man was getting closer, hauling himself up the branches as easily as climbing the rungs of a ladder, and reached up, palm spread up to Xander, almost offering it.

“Come and get me,” Xander grinned, and didn’t take the hand.

He just leaned back, and let go.

There was a sickening moment when his feet weren’t on the branch but gravity hadn’t yet caught onto him, and he hung there in the sky like he was floating in space, Riddick’s open palm still mere inches away, close enough that he could reach out to grab it, if he moved fast enough, but then gravity wrapped its greedy fingers around him, and pulled him down into the open maw below him.

The wind whipped past his ears, whistling dully, cutting off all other sound, and he closed his eyes so that he didn’t see the man still in the tree, so that he didn’t see the stone whipping past him now, so that his eyes didn’t dry from the wind itself. He was waiting. Xander knew the water was coming, and he knew that it was going to hurt, but he was ready.

He _wasn’t_ ready for the wrist wrapped tightly around his that jerked him straight out of the pit.

Xander bolted awake.

Before he could make a sound, a callused palm pressed against his mouth, cutting off whatever he might have been about to say. There was a moment of silence, then the hands unfolded from his wrist and his face, and Xander was able to sit up. He drew in a deep breath, then held it when he noticed a pair of almost glowing eyes flick his way in the dim light of the instrument panel. _Apparently I can’t even breathe loud. Damn._ _That negates about half of what I would do right now, then_. 

He unhooked the cryo device off of his arm, wincing slightly when the needles slid out of his arm with a sting. Xander slid carefully forward in his seat, a little surprised by how stiff and clumsy he felt. The last time he’d felt like this, he’d slept outside at Christmas, on the cold hard ground. How long exactly had he been asleep in this cryo stuff? 

“What’s going on?” he hissed.

There was no answer.

“Dammit, he disappeared in the dark again,” Xander rolled his eyes, and slid out of the chair altogether, barely managing to catch himself on the armrest before he just tumbled to the ground. His knees felt like they were made of jell-o. Muttering to himself, he stood again, and tried to crouch a few times, just to get some blood flowing again. Finally, he started walking, trying to figure out where in the world the man who had woken him up had _gone_. 

And promptly he stumbled over everything between him and the hold. He tripped over his own chair, first, then the other chair - which did _not_ have Johns in it as he had expected - then over the instrument panel. He knew, of course, that Riddick had rather meant for him to be _quiet_ , but Xander didn’t have a cool ‘see-in-the-dark’ ability like the prison escapee had. That, and he was a klutz. So he tripped over everything between here and there, and kept swearing when he bashed knees and toes and in one bizarrely painful incident, his chin. Rubbing at his sore jaw, he finally slipped into the blacker than black cargo bay - where he ran into another solid obstacle he hadn’t been expecting. This one had a little more give than the _wall_ had, however, and he was pretty sure he’d just smacked into the back of the man who’d woken him up. 

“Riddick?” he guessed.

There was no answer, but he _did_ get a fleeting glimpse of blue eyes, so that answered _that_ question.

“Right. Why are we trying to be quiet? And why do we have no lights on? And where is _Johns_ , anyway? How’d you even get out of that chair? Oh hell, the _chair_! I should probably be like, running in terror from you, now, huh, cause you’re a mass murderer and all that stuff, but - “ 

“Shut up.”

“Right.” Xander mimed zipping his lips shut. “Shutting up now.”

The man shifted slightly in the darkness, and Xander followed close behind him. He could only hear the lightest brush of clothing on clothing when Riddick moved, like the soft whisper of a bird’s wings, and it was hard to figure out where exactly he was. So he reached out, curling his fingers in the back of Riddick’s shirt. 

There was a moment, when the man twisted back, glowing eyes narrowed as though he was going to rip Xander’s wrist from his arm for even daring to try that, then abruptly he twisted back and started walking again.

Relieved, he sighed softly, and kept following him, holding on tightly. 

They moved through the silence and the dark, and Xander was surprised that he was able to actually manage to follow him through the clinging, cloying shadows. Closing his eyes, Xander found he was actually able to follow him easier when he wasn’t _trying_ to see where Riddick was going, and simply fell into step behind him, moving silently - or as silently as Xander Harris had ever gotten in his life - behind him. There was a loud scrape of metal on rusty metal, that made him jump a little, startled. He’d been so used to the silence that he hadn’t expected the sound, but still, he just held on tightly and kept following him.

Riddick stopped just ahead of him, and Xander managed to actually pull himself up short of running into him again, and just curled his hand in the back of the other’s rather tight shirt, waiting. 

“Look.”

Xander hesitated, then slowly opened his eyes.

The ramp that led into the hold was open, and sunlight was pouring into the hold of the ship, bathing the entire metal interior of the ship in a dusty golden light. It glinted dully off of the metal chair that still sat ominous and dark, though several of the metal straps that were supposed to hold the “victim” in place appeared to have been broken and twisted in several places. The lights seemed too bright, and he shaded his eyes with a hand, frowning.

“We’ve landed somewhere,” Xander frowned, then, shifting closer to the edge of the ramp, still half standing behind Riddick. “Shit, look at this, we look like we’re in the middle of a desert or something... and you still haven’t told me where Johns went.”

Riddick had his goggles down, and his brows were tightly furrowed over them as he looked out over the brightly lit sunny fields beyond. 

Xander hadn’t been entirely right - they weren’t on a desert, not really. It was more like the Australian outback, with hard baked red clay ground, cracked and broken open by a lack of moisture. There was no sand, just red dust and dark red clay, like the ground was a large broken terra cotta pot thrown on the ground. This would have been Xander’s exact description of what hell would look like - except that there was a sprawling city spread out around them, all lit up like a Christmas tree with bright lights and garish bill boards and movement everywhere, people milling and moving and looking surprisingly cheerful considering they were in the middle of a clay desert. 

“This place is creepy,” Xander declared. “It’s like California without the benefit of an ocean.”

Riddick glanced at him, frowning slightly, then just started walking again, heading down the gangplank, ducking slightly under the doorway. Xander squeaked slightly, startled, but kept his fingers tangled in the back of the other’s tank top, and followed him down the ramp and into the little ‘stable’ or whatever it was they called a place to keep a space ship. 

They walked for a short piece before Riddick finally swatted Xander’s hands none-too-gently out of his shirt. 

Xander flushed, feeling sort of stupid, and just let his hands dangle by his sides, fisting them every once in awhile in his cargo pants as he tried to dry his sweaty palms. “So are we trying to figure out where the hell Johns went to, or are we just going to try and get away from him? I mean, you are on the whole jailbreak thing, so...”

“You can do what you want,” Riddick said, not even looking at him.

“Oh right, I guess you probably don’t want me trailing along behind and cramping your style...” Xander trailed off, glancing off to the side as they glanced a brightly coloured merchants stall, considering the little trinkets and things that were sitting on the table. “I mean, the whole bowing thing, whatever that was, has probably gotta piss you off.”

There was no answer, and he glanced up, blinking. 

Riddick wasn’t walking just ahead of him anymore.

Xander sighed heavily, and glanced up and down the street, not really surprised when he didn’t see the mysterious man in either direction. He even tilted his head back, looking up, and for a moment he thought he saw some movement, but then there was nothing there. A trick of the eye, maybe, or a man that wanted to get the hell away from him just darting out of the way. Either way, there was no way _Xander_ was about to hop up onto the roof and chase him down. 

So he sighed softly, and just ran his hand through his hair. 

“Evil goes to the left,” he muttered, so he headed, naturally, to the right.

  
 

\---

It didn’t take long for Xander to realize just how out of place he was.

People were walking and running and rushing past him, talking to each other in languages he sometimes sort of recognized and sometimes didn’t, hurrying to one place or another, but everyone was moving with some kind of purpose. Xander had no purpose. He was lost in space, apparently, and he didn’t even have a giant robot to tell him when he was in Danger! Will Robinson! Instead, he was stranded on his own, and the only two people he knew in the entire galaxy - universe, maybe? - weren’t really wanting to be around to be associated with him. Lovely.

At least the cargo pants he’d “inherited” from the soldier were better than his own ragged jeans, and the little bits of body armour he still wore made him feel a little less... exposed. But a coat or a hood or a hat of a Slayer to hide behind would have been greatly appreciated.

The biggest thing bothering him now was the lack of food.

Xander, naturally, had no money. Well, he had seventeen cents of assorted pennies and nickels he’d had in his sweater pocket, but that was hardly going to help him here. He’d watched the people shopping, mostly because he’d had absolutely nothing else to do, and partly because his poor grumbling stomach liked to torture him by making him watch people buy food, but everyone seemed to be paying with little metal squares. One person he’d overheard talking in broken English had called them ‘UDs’ and _those_ he had none of.

Someone jostled him, their elbow sinking into his gut, and Xander grunted, startled. “Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

It occurred to Xander, perhaps, a few moments too late, that Giles’ old advice of ‘start brain before engaging mouth’ was actually good stuff after all, as the man he’d impetuously bellowed at turned around to face him. Big, burly, long hair tied back in a scraggly mess of dread locks, this man made Riddick look like a school girl in comparison.

“Oh shit.” he breathed.

Baring black and rotting teeth in a snarl, the massive hulk of a man growled, “You talkin’ to me?”

Xander swallowed.

As he figured it, he had two options. Well, three, if you counted rabbiting for the hills now, but he’d never really been much for running. So his first choice was to taunt and blow it off with bravado, perhaps with a well placed “Oh, were you talking to me? I couldn’t hear you past your ugly.” or something. But without a Buffy waiting in the wings with a stake, that seemed like a supremely terrible idea. His second option was to turn his gift of gab on to eleven and hope to whatever god this planet believed in that he could talk his way out of this.

“You? Oh, no, of course not. There was some pipsqueak running around, you know, jabbing their elbow into people’s soft bits.” Xander held up a hand, miming a very short stature. “You seen him? Keep an eye, he might get you next.”

The guy’s eyes narrowed even further. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, totally,” he said quickly. “Was a little pathetic runt.”

The man lumbered forward a step, and Xander suddenly realized that people were backing up, the chatter of the marketplace dying down as they cleared a space for Xander’s massacre. “ _I_ jabbed you,” the behemoth snarled. “I didn’t like the look of your face. You gotta _problem_ with me, _boy_?”

Xander swallowed, thickly. “Oh no. No problem.”

“Cause that sure _sounded_ like a problem.” he growled, stepping so close that Xander could actually smell those rotting teeth.

He should’ve taken option three.

The massive brute lifted a meaty fist and brought it down hard. Xander was sort of preparing himself mentally for a broken face when someone caught the arm on its downward swing, and a familiar voice called, “Woah, woah, slow down there!”

Johns grinned up at the guy, and not for the first time since he’d left his own nice familiar planet did Xander feel a surge of relief.

“You _dare_?!” the man snarled.

“Just give me a minute,” Johns laughed, still grinning up at him. He looked a lot more relaxed than he had been before, and there was an almost glazed look to his eyes like he wasn’t really focusing. He’d seen Tony drunk often enough to recognize when someone wasn’t entirely engaging with reality. “My idiot here, he was dropped on his head as a baby, you know? Just give me a moment.”

“I’m going to rip his entrails out and wear them!” The man roared, spittle flying.

The mercenary hesitated, then held up a hand. “And you absolutely have that right, my friend. Just... give me _one_ moment, yeah?”

He twisted, poking Xander hard in the chest, genial smile disappearing in an instant, eye hardening, focusing. “What are you doing out here? I left you in cryo.”

“I woke up?” Xander suggested.

Johns brows narrowed over his eyes as he considered him seriously, intently, then snapped, “Riddick woke you up.”

He cleared his throat, and shrugged slightly.

The bounty hunter took a deep, steadying breath, closing his eyes for a moment, then said slowly, “Is there any chance in any world that Riddick is still chained up on board that ship?”

Xander hesitated, debating whether or not to flip on Riddick, but realized that in all honesty, he owed neither of these men any loyalty. Well, maybe he owed Riddick a little tiny _bit_ of loyalty because he’d saved him from Butcher Bay - he wasn’t really sure he’d _needed_ saving but either way, he’d been “saved”. Which is mostly why he said what he did, instead of just telling him that he was screwed. “You could check the roofs, but I’m gonna have to suggest you get a different ship if you really want to keep him in check later.”

Johns sighed slightly, and muttered, “I have to hunt him down again, then?”

“Or you could let him go?”

“Right. Buddy boy!” Johns’ face lit up again, and he spun to face the brute, who had been watching the whole exchange with his little piggy eyes narrowed and suspicious. “You don’t want to tear the little brat open here. Really, you deserve a space where you can rip him right to shreds properly.”

“Johns!” Xander squeaked, eyes wide and horrified.

“But it’d be nice to just rip his head off here.” He snarled. “Punt that head like a football.”

The teenager squeaked again.

“Yes, yes, and that sounds great, but hear me out here.” He rolled his eyes, and patted the guy’s arm. “Don’t like the kid’s face, right?” Johns’ hand had wrapped around Xander’s upper arm, and when the teenager tried to back away, slowly, he tugged him right back up to his side, holding him tightly in place. “Let everyone in town know they don’t piss you off or you rip out their rib cages and wear ‘em as a hat.”

Xander swallowed thickly, knees wobbling a little. This was _so_ not good.

The man hesitated, then grinned, baring black rotten teeth. “Perfect.”

“...Johns,” Xander hissed, quietly. “I know you don’t really like me, but you don’t have to - “

“What are you talking about?” The bounty hunter grinned at him, predatory. “I couldn’t be fonder of you if you were my own flesh and blood.”

“...you were the type to turn your mom in for a bounty, aren’t you?”

Johns grinned broadly, and tugged him along ahead of the brute, towards some location he’d apparently chosen would be a good place for Xander to have his insides become his outsides. “You’re going to solve a problem for me, Xander. So I love your ass right now.”

“That’s not making me feel any better!” Xander howled, fighting him every step of the way.

\---

  
 

The little courtyard seemed pretty boring, really. It was just a little square in the middle of an intersection, where four streets intersected to create a fairly smooth cobblestone square space. It just looked like some poor little normal space... except that the brick walls were splattered with old blood and people had gathered in _flocks_ to sit in the windows and on the roofs around the little square, peering down at them, watching eagerly.

Xander stood on one end of the little courtyard, wishing he was anywhere else and wondering if he could maybe push through the crowd of people who had crushed themselves into the street entrances to rabbit after all.

Mr. Rotten Tooth stood on the other end of the little courtyard, cracking his knuckles, grinning as he waited for his moment to literally remove Xander’s insides.

Xander would rather he didn’t, but Johns seemed to think this was brilliant.

For some reason.

Johns was, in fact, standing on the side of the little courtyard, arms crossed as he watched them, then suddenly held up a hand. “Hey... buddy. I got a proposal. Let’s make this interesting.”

Rotten Teeth glanced at him, frowning. “This is plenty interesting.”

“We could hear him out,” Xander suggested, then swallowed, feeling sort of stupid to suggest that, but dammit, Johns _might_ have an idea that would save his life. Maybe. Maybe it was just going to make his eventual disembowelment even more amusing for the onlookers, but dammit, if he didn’t give one of the only _two_ people in the universe he knew a chance, he may as well just roll over and let the guy skin him alive right now.

“Thank you, Xander,” Johns grinned. “I say we put a wager on the result.”

Xander gaped at him. “ _What_?!”

“I’m listening.” 

The mercenary grinned, and crossed his arms. “How about this. If the kid _lives_ , then you owe me a ship. A really _good_ ship.”

Xander just sort of made a little whimpering sound. 

The massive behemoth grinned, black teeth bared wide. He seemed to be doing that a lot, in the brief time Xander had ‘known’ him. Mostly, the guy also seemed to like threatening to disembowel people. Great. Even worse, the guy seemed willing to actually _do_ the disemboweling, which was not exactly how Xander wanted to spend his evenings. “Deal.”

“Great.” Johns glanced at Xander, and pointed at him. “I’m counting on you, Xander. Try not to die.”

“Thanks. Thanks, Johns. That makes me feel a lot better.”

He smirked, and winked.

Xander was _really_ tempted to pull a Spike and give the guy the finger, but in the end, just decided to _move_ when he noticed that Teeth was moving towards him, those huge meaty paws of his reaching out towards him. 

He didn’t really have a strategy other than just to keep out of his way. Honestly, he had no idea what a better strategy _could_ be, other than to really wish that he had the hyena in his head again so that he’d have even the vaguest idea of what to do in this situation. All he could think to do was just to keep out of the massive man’s way, and maybe hope for some kind of opening. Or maybe a weapon. He was good with axes and stakes... he’d never really killed a _living_ person before, but then, no living regular person had even been trying to kill him before.

“Hey... listen... buddy. We could make a deal of our own. You don’t kill me, I tell everyone how terrifying and big and strong you are. Deal? Sounds like a good deal to me.”

Teeth swung at him, and he backed up, quickly. His back slammed into the wall, and he winced, ducking when Teeth swung again. This time, the massive man’s knuckles cracked into the wall where his head had been a moment before, the stone spider-webbing out.

_Note to self_ , Xander thought. _Avoid that being my face_.

He darted out away from him, darting past Johns, who didn’t even seem to be watching the fight. How confident _was_ this guy, that his attention was off somewhere in the crowd? Dammit. He was fighting for his life, here! “Seriously... negotiation! Can’t we talk this over? Maybe come to some kind of mutually beneficial deal of some kind? Maybe?”

“Stop running like a little worm,” Teeth snarled, and swung at him again, and this time, his fingers caught the back of Xander’s shirt, and he tugged him back towards him. Xander did consider just trying to shed his sweater, and he even tried, but he hadn’t been willing to shed the body armour when he’d heard that this man wanted to remove his rib cage and wear it like a hat, so his sweater caught on the armour and he couldn’t pull it off, which meant that Teeth just yanked him right back and slammed him down to the ground. 

Xander rolled to the side, trying to get away from him, his knee already crying out in protest from being slammed down to the cobblestones. “Woah! This ain’t negotiations, buddy! Come on, be the bigger man here - well, you are the bigger man, already, but, uh, you know what I mean - and let’s talk!”

Teeth slammed down again, and this time Xander didn’t manage to roll out of the way - those knuckles came down on his collarbone, slamming into the bone hard enough that Xander felt it _snap_ like a old dried out wishbone. He almost screamed - but bit down on his tongue instead, and rolled out of his way again. “Fuck,” he gasped, tongue bloody. 

Xander rolled up to his feet, and darted back, rapidly, just holding his left arm loosely cradled against his stomach. His collarbone had been broken, he knew that as clearly as he knew anything else, and he wasn’t about to move his left arm and try to do anything with it just to have his collarbone stab into his lung or something. That was a fate that would _definitely_ end with Johns not being able to get his space ship. “That - _that_ wasn’t nice.”

“I can smell your blood, little kid,” Teeth grinned, those rotten teeth bared as he neared him again, nostrils flared. “I am going to spread your blood all over this alley.”

Xander had absolutely no doubt that he would, too, given the chance.

He shifted back, and slammed his foot down into the wooden crate he’d noticed earlier when he’d been scanning the place, and stooped just slightly, and wrapped his fingers around one of the pieces of wood, breaking it free from the rest of the box, and shifting away from him again, holding the wooden rough stake as firmly as he could. Even the sharp aching in his collarbone wasn’t about to stop him from protecting himself. “Okay. Come on - come on punk. Go ahead. Make - make my day.”

Teeth actually looked thrilled that he was actually trying to protect himself. Shit.

He roared, and leapt for him, swinging at Xander.

He howled right back, and slammed the wood into the other man’s chest.

Teeth snarled, but kept pushing.

Xander knew that he was pushing that wooden stake straight into the side of the massive man’s chest, and pushed his whole weight into it despite the knuckles slamming into his jaw and cheekbones, baring his teeth as the jagged end of the wooden board shoved even deeper into him. The way blood bubbled on the other’s lips a few moment later told him that he’d dug the end straight through and into the other man’s lung. 

Teeth spit frothy blood all over Xander’s forehead, then tangled his fingers in his hair, and slammed Xander’s head back into the brick walls, slamming it several times. 

Dizzy, head bleeding and throbbing, Xander grit his teeth, and leaned even harder on his improvised weapon, thrusting it hard enough that it actually burst like a ragged broken sword straight through the other man’s back, and pushed harder, until it slammed fully into him, and clattered out onto the ground. 

The massive man staggered, coughing again, frothy blood spraying over Xander for a moment, then he roared and raced forward to slam his hand into Xander’s throat, probably meaning to strangle or maybe snap his neck.

He never got a chance.

Xander staggered when the massive man was suddenly not holding his throat anymore, still holding his left arm against his chest as he looked up, confused and stunned. 

Teeth was lying on the ground, now, on his stomach, with his left arm twisted right up behind his back. His bloody mouth was stretched open as he howled pain and rage to the skies, but half of those rotten teeth were scattered out on the cobblestones. A dark clad bald man had him pinned with a knee against the back of his neck, pinning him down to the cobblestones. He glanced up, those blue eyes still hidden behind those black goggles, and pressed his knee down even harder against Teeth’s neck. “Still alive, kid?”

Xander half stooped to grasp another piece of wood from the box, wrenching it free, and limped slowly towards the two men, trying not to limp and mostly failing. 

Riddick looked back at him with an unreadable expression, waiting.

“You son of a fucking _bitch_ ,” Xander snapped, and brought the wood down on Teeth’s head, wooden shards splintering away from the man’s head, bits and pieces scattering across the cobblestones. He dropped the last few pieces of the wood to the bricks next, and took a deep breath, holding himself up straight. Something about terrifying people like Riddick made him want to hide any bare traces of weakness. “Bitch really... really pissed - pissed me off.”

Johns sauntered over to them, thumbs hooked in his belt, frowning slightly. “Well then. How’s the son of a bitch supposed to give us a ship now, Xander?”

“Do I look like I care?” he grunted, fighting to keep himself upright. 

Rolling his eyes, Johns idly waved a gun at Riddick, tapping it lightly against the bald man’s lower back. “I thought you might come to get him. So let’s get you _all_ back to the ships and find out which one is ours now, shall we?”

“Why the hell would he come to get me?” Xander’s broken collarbone was really starting to hurt him now. It throbbed dully under his skin, and now that he was walking, he could feel the bones grinding against each other, and he swallowed, hard. It was a sharp sort of pain, making his stomach clench. “He hates my guts, remember?”

“He respects you, brat,” Johns cuffed Xander on the back of the head, making him hiss in pain. That damn well _hurt_. Teeth had really slammed the back of his head open against that wall.

“Respect doesn’t make someone rescue you.” he grumbled, reaching up to gently touch the back of his own head, crinkling his nose when he discovered how wet with blood his fingers were. There was a lot of blood back there. Damn. “Respect is what you deserve when you beat the guy in your own right and don’t have a bald guy show up and beat the guy down for you.”

Johns arched a brow. “Well, damn kid. You sound downright cynical.”

He shrugged, then immediately regretted that, and swore colourfully in a few languages - including a few demon languages and a few more that he was pretty sure he’d just made up on the spot. 

Riddick snickered.

He wasn’t sure if that made him angry, or somehow proud that he’d actually _actually_ made the muscly man laugh.

He decided to settle on proud.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Um.” Xander said, swallowing. “This strikes me as a really bad idea.”

“What, you want to go into cryo with a broken collar bone?” Johns arched a brow, smirking slightly. “That strikes me as a terrible idea.”

“No, no, I’d much rather _not_ go to sleep for weeks at a time with broken bones, that strikes me as a very bad idea, but maybe it’s only fractured, not really broken?” he suggested, weakly, swallowing. “Okay, no, I know it’s broken, and yeah, I get that it needs a sling and everything, and yes, I get that I _might_ need some medication. But in my _eyeball_?”

“I’m letting you have some of my meds.” He waved the little gun thing he’d been loading morphine shots into. “These are hard to come by.”

“So you’re willing to give me medication.” He crinkled his nose, displeased. “Okay, okay.”

“Hold still,” Johns ordered, using his thumb to push Xander’s eyelid up.

“Woah, woah, woah,” he held up his hands and scrambled back in the seat. This new ship was a real work of art, down to the leather seats and the wide open spaces. It was a marked difference from the shitty little ship they’d ‘borrowed’ from Hoxie. He still said that Johns should have taken the bigger, fancier ship that had been beside it, but the mercenary had said it was too attention getting. Still, this new ship was supposed to be off the radar, even though it was much nicer. And sure, he liked the much nicer ship, but that still didn’t mean he liked the idea of someone shoving needles into his eyeballs. “Okay, hold off. Are you _really_ sure I need morphine in my _eyeballs_? Can’t I like... get it in my arm, or something?”

“Your _arm_.” he repeated, arching a brow. “That is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard of.”

“That’s how they do it back home,” Xander flushed, clearing his throat. “Or in the ass, they do that too. Just make you bend over and stick it in.”

“Your ass.” Johns grinned wolfishly. “You coming onto me, Xander?”

“Oi,” he flushed.

He snickered, and pushed Xander back by his good shoulder, literally crawling into his lap as he straddled Xander’s thighs. “Now. Sit still.”

“I am _completely_ not comfortable with this,” Xander squeaked. 

“Do I look like I care?” he tossed Xander’s earlier comment back at himself. “If you’re going to keep squirming and moving, I’m not going to be able to dose you, and if I can’t dose you, I can’t fix that damn shoulder, and if I can’t fix that damn shoulder, you’re no good to me on the slaver market.”

“You are _not_ selling me as a slave,” Xander said firmly, displeased. He’d _better_ not.

“Fine. I won’t sell you as a slave. I’ll keep that stupid ass of yours for myself. Now keep _still_ , before I call Riddick to hold you down for me.”

He winced, still squirming back from Johns as much as he could. He didn’t really want to just throw him off, although that might be a better idea, really. Maybe he should just throw him off and bolt - he was starting to realize that when even the barest instinct said ‘rabbit’ that maybe he should listen - but the man _was_ trying to help. He was pretty sure. He wasn’t _really_ sure why, but... well, actually, Johns probably _would_ sell him out to slavers. Hell, the man wagered for a ship on the possibility that Riddick _might_ come rescue Xander from Teeth.

“Riddick wouldn’t do that,” Xander said, confidently.

“He would so,” Johns grinned, and reached up to lift Xander’s eyelid again. “Now hold still.”

He swallowed thickly, and was about to bolt up when a callused palm pressed firmly against his forehead, and he crossed his eyes, looking up at the slightest bit of a hand he could see just out of the top of his eyes. “Please tell me that Riddick is _not_ the one holding me down?”

“Sorry, no can do.” 

A needle suddenly slid with a sharp slick pop into the corner of his eye, right where the actual eyeball met his eyelid, and he gasped, arching slightly in shock, pressing hard against the palm on his forehead. If Riddick _hadn’t_ been holding him down, he probably would have broken the needle or something, but instead he was held firmly in place as morphine slid into his bloodstream with a hiss of released air. 

The needle slid out of his eye a moment later, and Xander slumped, breathing tightly through his grit teeth.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Johns snorted, and swung out of Xander’s chair, dropping the needle gun into a little case, locking it tight. “Now we just need to set that collarbone and maybe we should get a bandage on that head of yours.”

“My head’s stopped bleeding, there’s no point in bandaging it,” Xander grumbled, straining to lift his head, frowning when Riddick made absolutely no attempt to move his hand. “...seriously, why are you helping him on this?”

“I’m not helping him,” he growled slightly. It didn’t really sound dangerous though, not right now. Either the drugs were hitting Xander faster than he expected or Riddick just sort of always talked like he was about to threaten the life of everyone he spoke to. “You’re only useful when you’re entertaining.”

“I’m good at entertaining,” he murmured, closing his eyes. He _was_ starting to feel the morphine.

“Hold him down, I’m going to reset the bone,” Johns stepped forward, glancing up at the bald man standing behind the chair. 

“Ignore him,” Xander ordered, then reached up to knock the convict’s hand aside. He knew that it was probably a stupidly dangerous idea to do something as reckless as that, but he didn’t really care. Apparently the drugs were hitting him harder and faster than he expected, if he was going to be doing stupid shit like this, but he didn’t care. “I don’t want him setting it if his solution for every little bump and scrape and broken bone is gonna be ‘stick him in the eye with a painkiller’. I’ll set it myself.”

“Xander,” Johns started, stepping forward.

“I’ve got this,” he held up his good hand, then grabbed his other arm and pulled on it, letting out a soft grunt of pain as he felt his shoulder shift back out and the broken bone shift. He wished he had a third hand, that would help him move the bone into its proper alignment, but if he just wriggled it...

Riddick moved the collarbone into place. It caught Xander off guard enough that he almost released his arm and let it snap back into its broken and painful place, but he caught it in time. Trembling finely, not really from pain as that was completely dulled from the drugs, but really more from the nerves that went along with actually moving bones and things inside his own skin and trying to reset it, Xander waited until he felt the pieces of bone nestle back into each other in their proper places before he stopped trying to pull on his arm and just let his shoulder and collarbone shift into their proper places. “ _Now_ , Johns,” he spoke up, sighing as he slumped back in his seat, “I could use some help. I need to sling it so that I don’t move it.”

“There is something wrong with both of you,” Johns muttered, stepping forward to tie the thing. “There is something batshit about you, too.”

“Great,” Xander rolled his eyes, glancing back at Riddick. Only the man wasn’t there anymore, and he hesitated for a moment. “I wasn’t hallucinating or anything, right? Riddick _did_ just push my bone back into place, right?”

“He avoids you except when you’re all whimpery kicked puppy baby bird with a broken wing,” Johns rolled his eyes, tying the sling. “He stays away unless you do that pathetic little... ‘save me’ sound. Like it’s a distress beacon for the convict or something.”

“I don’t do a kicked puppy thing!” Xander yelped.

“Sure you do,” Johns snorted, folding a loose sling out of what looked like Xander’s own mangled Hawaiian shirt. Teeth had apparently ripped the sleeve off when Xander had tried to shed it and his armour earlier. He’d have to have some kind of memorial later, or something. “You make this little ‘nnh nnh nnh’ sound like a wounded puppy, and seconds later, there’s Riddick, like a pissed off mama bear wanting to kill whatever hurt its young. It’d be sort of terrifying if it wasn’t just so hilarious.”

Xander huffed. “Bullshit.”

“How d’you think I knew you were going to outlive the guy in that fight?” John headed over. “Lift your arm so I can get this under it. I knew he’d come to rescue you. Was banking on that being how I caught him again.”

“And if he’d already left the planet?” Xander sucked in a sharp breath when Johns’ first aid attempts jarred his collarbone. 

“You know, most normal kids would have screamed.” Johns tied the sling tightly. “When that guy snapped your bones like that. You didn’t even say anything. Not gonna come say I’m doing it wrong again, Riddick?”

Xander’s head snapped up, startled, looking for the subject of that statement. 

For a minute, he really thought Johns was just making a lame joke at his expense, but then he noticed a brief glint of piercing blue in the shadows that clung heavy and dark near the door to the rest of the ship, and he groaned slightly. “He’s watching, isn’t he? How long has he been watching?”

“I noticed a minute after your little gasp.” Johns smirked, tightening the last knot, making sure that his collarbone was held in place. “He just showed up. He does that.”

“I’ve noticed,” he grumbled, sighing softly. “Can I get any food, maybe?”

“I’ll get you one of the nutri bars,” The mercenary smirked, and headed for the back of the boat. He slipped past Riddick on his way, and flicked a hand gesture at him that Xander sort of assumed was the space version of the finger. Really, he ought to find out what that version was... he probably would find occasion to use it often enough. 

Leaning back in the chair, he considered the blackness Riddick was enshrouded in, wonderingly. “So. You like stalking me. That’s kinda creepy.”

The shadows themselves seemed to move, like they were made of a soft black liquid darkness, and Riddick stepped slowly out of the dark, dressed all in darkness himself, his goggles high on his bald forehead. He smirked slightly, looking sort of amused, and held out his hand, dropping a large, plump fruit in Xander’s lap. The teenager blinked at the dark red skinned fruit, and picked it up, considering it for a few moments, then smirked slightly at Riddick. “Dork,” he informed him, and bit into the fruit, deeply. It was sweet and juicy, and he groaned softly as he swallowed the soft fleshy fruit. “This is _really_ good. What’s it called?”

“What’s what called?” Johns frowned, setting several foil packages on the control panel, then blinked at Xander. “Where’d you get - oh, of course. Your guardian mama bear brought you food. Of course he did.”

He pouted, taking another bite of the sweet, velvety fruit. 

“Yeah, you two are total freaks,” he rolled his eyes, and tapped the foil packages with a fingertip. “When you’re done with the fruit, try one of these, at least you’ll get some protein. I’m going to figure out which prison colony we’re dumping your mama bear at, then we’ll figure out where we’re putting you.”

Xander nodded, taking another bite of the sweet fruit, and licked the dripping juice off the inside of his wrist.

  
 

\---

  
 

The cryo units in this new ship were much different than the ones in the old ship, but they also didn’t exactly make Xander want to curl up in them and just go to sleep. 

They looked like coffins. 

They were massive metal and glass things with a softish mattress thing across the bottom, with a glass top that swung down over the cryo units, keeping the person inside trapped under the glass as if they were Sleeping Beauty trapped underneath. It creeped Xander out.

He avoided them. Johns had decided not to go into cryo yet, apparently because cryo managed to _stop_ life, as though someone had just hit a pause button. He kept making jokes that Xander wasn’t going to be much of a seller on the slave market with a broken collarbone, so he wanted to keep Xander from going under until the bone had at least set. Xander was starting to wonder if Johns wasn’t actually serious. So he’d waited the few days Johns had decided was long enough for his bones to set, always sleeping in the co-pilot’s seat instead of the cryo pods. Hell, even Johns slept in the cryo pods when he slept at “night”, not that they had any idea when night was, not when they were in space.

But it was hard to avoid it _now_. 

Sighing softly, Xander reluctantly sat on the edge of the little ‘coffin’, swallowing as he did. There was something deeply unsettling about the idea of sleeping in a coffin, even if it wasn’t _really_ a coffin, especially when it was some kind of chemical coma he would be in. The idea was terrifying. 

Johns was setting the navigation system so that it would take them by auto-pilot to the Tangiers prison colony, where he was planning on pawning off Riddick. Again. And Xander would _really_ like to be asleep before Johns came back and started trying to get Riddick off to bed. Somehow he didn’t think bedtime for escaped convicts involved bedtime stories and warm milk. 

Shame, really. He bet those would be some great storybooks.

_Once upon a time, there was a teenaged boy who got pulled through time and space and ended up meeting a very scary escaped criminal. The criminal was very tall and very strong and very scary and he could see in the dark. This is the story of how he saved the boy over and over again_.

Well, actually, come to think of it, that sounded like a really shitty story. 

He sighed, and reluctantly slid into the pod, resting his head on the “roll” that sort of formed a pillow, just gnawing at his lip. He wanted to go to sleep, but he wanted to go to _normal_ sleep. He supposed that wasn’t really an option, was it. He keened slightly, gnawing on his lip.

“Cryo ain’t natural.”

He bolted up, then blinked at the man leaning on the “coffin” next to his. Xander hadn’t even noticed Riddick arriving, which probably said a lot about how freaked out by the cryo he was right now, as he’d been sort of on edge and always watching for anything unusual lately. He shifted slightly, leaning back against the side of the glass coffin, considering the bald man leaning against the other, calmly. “You keep scaring me like that.”

He rolled his eyes, and shrugged. 

Xander hesitated, and tugged one of his knees up to his chest, curling his arms loosely around his leg as he considered the convict, thoughtfully, chin resting on his knee. “You been avoiding me, huh?”

“Typically, yes,” he agreed, smirking slightly.

He grinned at him, despite himself. It was actually really a funny thought, that he was sort of joking with a man that seriously would probably kill him if he had the chance. Xander just sort of figured he was being kept alive by the convict for now because he was useful for _something_. He wasn’t sure for what, but something made him useful, obviously. He was sort of used to that. After all, didn’t Buffy mostly just keep him around because he was useful? For getting donuts, anyway, but... at least that was something. “So you’ve been avoiding me because I freak you out, or because you didn’t want to do anymore bowing, or because you had no idea why in the world you were always saving me, or because you just kind of avoid people in general anyway?”

Riddick arched a single brow, those blue eyes as unreadable and blank as Xander had ever seen them before. 

“...right. Am I just going to have to guess on everything?” Xander snorted. “Because I’m willing to talk enough for the both of us, but if I keep doing that, I’m going to find myself not waking up from cryo, aren’t I?”

The man snorted, and shifted slightly on the edge of his own cryo coffin, considering Xander. “Probably.”

“That’s what I thought,” he agreed, grinning up at him. “Got any more of those fruit things?”

“No,” he shifted again, and thumped his hand down on the edge of Xander’s cryo coffin. “Lay down.”

“...well, that sounds kind of creepy,” he flushed, but squirmed down and flopped back in the cryo coffin again, resting his head on the pillow and squirming carefully into the little blanket. “I kind of feel like I should have a blanket.”

“I told you. Cryo ain’t natural.” Riddick leaned down to press two fingers on either side of Xander’s newly set collarbone, and pushed down slightly. To Xander’s surprise, he didn’t even flinch or make that pathetic whimpery sound Johns always accused him of. It didn’t even _hurt_ , which was strange considering he was pretty sure Johns’ scant dose he’d given him four days ago wouldn’t possibly last until now. 

“Is it healing fine?” Xander asked, frowning slightly. 

Riddick’s eyes flicked up to his face for a moment, then nodded once. “Sleep.”

He sighed softly, and squirmed properly into the cushions, folding his hands on his stomach and smiling weakly up at the muscular man. “So I guess I’ll see you when I wake up. You know, provided you don’t decide to just leave me in here for all of eternity or knife me before I wake up or something. Up to you, I guess, since I’ll be sleeping and won’t know what you’re planning.”

He snorted, and swung the door of the cryo unit shut, closing Xander inside. 

Xander watched him through the glass, swallowing as he watched the man type on a touch screen for a few moments, hitting a few controls. Riddick then shifted back to lean on the side of the cryo unit again, resting his palm on the glass.

He hesitated for a moment, feeling sort of funny already, eyelids heavy. But Xander unfolded his hands, and reached up to press his palm against the other side of the glass, pressing his hand against Riddick’s with only the glass between them. Riddick frowned slightly, but didn’t move his hand until Xander’s finally tumbled down beside him, his eyes falling shut as the teenager fell into the cryo induced sleep. 

“All right, let’s get you in cryo, Xander. So get in that bed and - “ Johns frowned, glancing up at Riddick. “Oh well, your baby bear’s in cryo already.”

Riddick snorted, and pulled his hand back to himself, crossing his arms. “You got a problem with the kid, Johns?”

“Me? Hell no, I ain’t got a problem with him.” He leaned over the glass, considering the sleeping teenager. Xander was sleeping far more peacefully than he normally did, with no shifting about in his seat or drooling impressively. Just breathing slowly, eyes shut, eyelashes dark on his skin like a soft shadow. “Fact, I’m considering keeping the kid, even after we ditch you off in the Slam. I could always use a - what shall we call him... protégé?”

“Whore?” Riddick suggested. 

“Actually, that might not be a bad name for what I want from him,” he snickered, and clapped Riddick’s shoulder before he moved to the instrument panel. “Get in your pod, Riddick. Time for mama bears to join their cubs and go to bed.”

Riddick sneered.

Johns sighed, and tugged his gun out of the back of his pants, holding it against Riddick almost lazily. “In, Riddick.”

He shook his head, but reluctantly stepped into the cryo pod, laying down.

“Thought so.”  
  
[A Caucus-Race and a Long Tail](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/47126.html)  


 

 


	4. White Rabbit - A Caucus-Race and a Long Tail

  


  
**White Rabbit - A Caucus-Race and a Long Tail**

 

Xander bolted awake and promptly cracked his forehead off the glass of the cryo pod, yelping. 

There was a snort, one that he knew didn’t come from him, and Xander slumped back in the pod, sighing softly as he glanced out of the pod, at the smirking man standing in front of the control panel. Rolling his eyes, he tapped the glass, hopefully. There was a bit of give, and he was relieved to be able to push it open, and swing his legs out of the cryo pod, clearing his dry throat. “How long were we sleeping?”

“Six weeks,” Riddick growled, and turned to face Xander when he stood. 

“Shit, that was the fastest six week nap _I’ve_ ever had,” Xander smirked, running his fingers through his hair, crinkling his nose. He hadn’t had a shower since he’d last been home in California, and he was starting to get _really_ greasy. “Do you dream in cryo too? Johns said you don’t dream, but I’ve only been in it twice and I swear I dreamed both times... though this time I just sort of dreamed of being in the ship and hearing things. Monsters running around, stuff like that.” He scratched his jaw, considering Riddick. “...how come you were the one who woke me up, anyway? Wouldn’t Johns be pissed if he knew you were up waking people up?”

“Do I look like I care?”

“You often say that,” he snorted, then realized, a bit late, that he’d ran _both_ of his hands through his hair. He blinked, looking down at the sling, which he was still wearing, but which wasn’t slung around his arm anymore, just sort of hanging loose and empty from his shoulder. “I moved my arm.”

“You heal quickly,” Riddick said, not looking up at him, frowning slightly. “Come on.”

“Come where?” he asked, alarmed, following the man when he started moving towards the back of the cabin, not even questioning the fact that he was blindly following the convict. Xander sort of had a habit of following people, it wasn’t as though it was something new. Even when Riddick reached up to grasp the roof struts and pull himself up into the ceiling space, Xander didn’t ask - he just clambered up onto the top of a metal barrel, and grabbed one of the metal braces, tugging himself up. It was something like his old dream, with the tree branches, and just like last time, his arms ached and wobbled slightly when he clambered up into the ceiling. 

Riddick didn’t help him. Xander didn’t really expect him to.

Settling into a careful straddle of a metal beam, Xander looked up, meeting the pale blue eyes across the darkness. “Okay, so I’m up. What now?”

The ship suddenly rocked. It wasn’t like the rocking of landing, which he’d now felt a few times, but it also wasn’t anything as strong as the crash when they had slammed into Hoxie’s office. It was somewhere in between the bump of a controlled landing and the absolute smash bash of a crash landing. Xander yelped slightly, catching himself on the metal beam that he was straddling, holding on tightly. “What happened?” 

“We’re being reeled in.” Riddick frowned, his thighs squeezing the girder hard enough that he didn’t have to use his hands to hold on. “We’re being taken on board a larger ship.”

“....that strikes me as a bad thing.” Xander said at last. 

“Probably,” Riddick agreed, then shifted back on the girder itself, sinking into the shadows. “Move further back.”

He hesitated, then slid closer to Riddick, sinking into the shadows themselves, which sort of reached out to pull him in, just like it did for the convict, embracing him and tugging him into the shadows. He had to squirm closer to Riddick, which was a little awkward, but he did, shifting a little so that he was able to swing one leg back over the girder, then the other leg, so that he was straddling it exactly the same, but backwards, facing towards the ship so that he could see what was going on inside the cabin. 

Oh yeah, it was probably the stupidest thing in the universe, to put his back to a convicted murderer that had bust out of prison more times than probably anyone else ever, but if he hadn’t stabbed him yet, he probably wouldn’t stab him now. 

Hopefully.

He _really_ hoped so.

The ship rocked again, then again, and again. It was like something was poking at it with giant poles, and the whole ship shook as it was jerked from side to side. Xander gasped, gripping the girder tightly as he struggled to hold on. His collarbone didn’t even bother him, but he wasn’t sure if that was because it had healed, or because he was full of adrenaline. Either was possible.

There was a last, sort of almighty lurch, and Xander had to grab onto something other than the girder to keep his balance - he ended up grabbing Riddick’s thigh and gripping tightly to keep from just tumbling to the plas-teel floor below. Riddick didn’t say anything, but he sort of glowered at him until Xander removed his fingers from the very - holy crap, very very very - muscular thigh.

“Has it stopped?” Xander asked as loudly as he dared, which was really barely more than just breathing.

Riddick’s hand settled silently against the back of Xander’s neck, and the man squeezed just slightly. The message was loud and clear - shut up and don’t make me break this.

He swallowed, and nodded.

Riddick didn’t move his hand. The dry fingers just stayed curled around the back of his neck, the pad of his thumb pressing lightly into that thumping pulse point in Xander’s throat, like he was measuring his heartbeat.

Xander sort of wondered if Riddick could feel it speed up.

There was a small crunch sound to the left, and both of their heads snapped in that direction. Riddick could probably see more than Xander, who just sort of saw the darkness of the cabin, but both saw the flare of a small cutter torch, then the abrupt entrance of a very small drone - black and sleek and entirely remote controlled robotics. It zipped through the small space of the cabin, flitting over the top of the cryo pods - one not in use, one malfunctioning and empty, one that was still humming but with no passengers inside, and one with a sleeping man still inhabiting it.

Xander barely dared to breathe. Who knew if this thing recorded life signs, or heat signatures?

It settled on top of Johns’ cryo unit, and a long metal spike pierced the glass before a yellowish tinted smoke started to fill the otherwise sealed unit. Johns began to thrash, pained expressions flitting across his face. 

Alarmed, Xander half shifted forward, but Riddick’s hand swiftly tightening on the back of his neck stopped him immediately.

Of course, Riddick was right, because mere seconds later, cutting torches started on the hatch door, slicing through the metal like hot knives through butter, parting it smoothly before the door itself fell right into the ship with the dull clang of metal on metal.

Two men clad in black with gas masks stepped in first, followed by a tall woman. Her hair was done up in tight braids pinned back with a large pin, and she too wore a gas mask. She, however, removed hers a few moments later, revealing a hawk like, sharp featured face. It wasn’t an ugly face by any means, but she was not a woman one would likely praise for her beauty, either. Her sharp eyes were sweeping over the shadows of the ship as though she could cut through them like spotlights. Xander shuddered against the imagined feel of that gaze, and shifted back on the girder. That brought him, to his surprise, flush against Riddick’s chest, and he started to shift forward to avoid pissing the convict off. Riddick, however, slid his hand forward to cup the other side of Xander’s throat now, his thumb pressing silently into the side of Xander’s windpipe, and held him in place.

Xander thought he showed remarkable wisdom when he didn’t argue.

She seemed to be focusing on the case Johns was sleeping in, anyways, so he just leaned forward, slightly, so that he could watch her move. The dry palm on his throat kept him firmly in place, and he swallowed hard against the palm.

“Ah.” She said suddenly, breaking the silence, making Xander jump. “Johns. Johns, Johns, Johns. You’re in a lot of trouble, my friend. They’re looking for you and your... cargo.”

The woman trailed off, eyes scanning the hold again.

Xander held his breath, just pressing his back a little tighter to Riddick’s chest and trying to avoid being seen. Her eyes swept over the space again before landing back on Johns. “Smart thinking, to ditch Hoxie’s ship, but the Bay has put a rather large bounty on the heads of those involved in the escape... and that includes you, Johns. Now... whatever could you have done with...” She said the next word with relish, like she was enjoying rolling it around on her tongue, “ _Riddick_?”

The way she said it sent a shudder up Xander’s spine.

The other man’s hand tightened just slightly as the woman got into an argument with some unseen person, presumably on a bridge or something somewhere, at least from the little bits of the conversation Xander actually understood. He was sort of distracted, what with the soft press of the heel of Riddick’s hand pressing into his windpipe just hard enough for him to see some dancing lights at the edges of his vision. It wasn’t even that he was afraid that Riddick was going to snap his neck - though he was pretty damn sure it wouldn’t even be any effort for him if he decided to do exactly that - but it was just sort of... distracting. Well, Xander _was_ really good at getting distracted, so no one should really blame him.

He _did_ catch it, though, when the woman ordered the man following her to take Johns with them.

And he sure didn’t miss it when Riddick squeezed even harder for just a second, hard enough to bruise, then released him. Xander still didn’t manage to breathe, though, because the massively heavy with muscled man pushed the teen down to the girder, literally pinning him with his body as he reached down into the cabin. Clutching at the girder, motionless mostly because he could actually feel Riddick’s heart beating against his back, he was pinning him that hard, watching as the other’s fingers just touched that elaborate hair pin.

Xander bit his lip, and tried to squish himself flatter, to give Riddick more room to work. It wasn’t easy.

But a moment later, the weight of the other abruptly lifted off of him, and Riddick sat up with the elaborate hair pin dangling in his fingers.

He just sighed, breathlessly, and went limp on the girder.

Sue him, he was afraid Riddick was going to get them both killed. Or, rather, get _Xander_ killed, because the brute would probably just find an elaborate yet artfully simple way to get away, and just leave Xander behind to act as a distraction.

The woman - the captain, he supposed - left, but not without noticing that her hair _wasn’t_ pinned back. Dammit. Riddick was still going to manage to get them killed. Somehow.

Mere moments after the little troupe was gone - carrying a still very comatose looking Johns with them - Riddick swung lightly out of the ceiling, landing lightly on the floor. He straightened, then calmly held up a hand.

“I can do it myself, thank you very much,” Xander said loftily, and wriggled onto his stomach, then dropped to the floor. He didn’t do it gracefully or lightly, but he figured that the fact that he’d done it alone had to earn _some_ respect, right?

Riddick didn’t really look impressed.

Dammit.

“What’s the plan now?” he asked, wiping his sweaty hands on his cargo pants.

“Leave before salvage gets here.”

He blinked. “Good plan. Uh.... am I coming, you know, for this plan? Or am I on fend for myself duty? Cause I’m not saying I can’t do it, or anything, but you never know, I could be useful or something, right? Riddick?”

“Just shut up and do what I tell you,” he said, and headed out of the ship, into the larger ship beyond theirs.

It was massive. He could tell that already. There were shadows spreading far into the distance that he couldn’t even seem to see the end of, dull red lights flicking on and off in the distance, showing the massive size of the hanger. If this was the size of the hanger, how huge was the ship itself?

He pressed close to Riddick’s back, swallowing as he quietly curled his fingers in the back of the other’s shirt again.

Riddick didn’t say a thing, but seemed not to mind, not really, because every time he ducked out of sight, Xander followed, and when he ducked low to avoid being seen, he followed. 

“Do you see that?” 

Xander squirmed forward. They were crouched on the ground, and all Xander seemed to be able to hear was the pounding of his own heart in his ears. But he still squirmed closer to Riddick, trembling slightly as he pressed against the man’s back, peering over his shoulder at where the convict was pointing. “The air vent?” he suggested.

Riddick glanced back at him slightly, and nodded briefly.

Relieved, he sighed softly, and nodded. “Okay. Great. Yeah, I sort of know someone who hid in those sorts of things. Are we going up there?”

The convict nodded. “Yeah.”

“Great.” He grinned weakly. “This is gonna be... fun. Okay. Let’s do it.”

\---

  
 

Climbing up into the air vents was a lot harder than Xander had anticipated. How the heck had Marcie done this all that time? Invisi-girl had been hiding muscles of steel. Which sort of made sense, since any muscles she would have had would have been invisible.

Worst part had been that there wasn’t even a ladder - he’d had to clamber up boxes and work along an exposed pipe, hand over hand. 

Flopping down into the metal air-duct shaft, Xander let out a long sigh, slightly breathless. He could probably keep going if he had to - and he was pretty sure he’d have to - but don’t ask him to run a marathon or nothing. “Do you think the rest of this escape is going to be a lot of climbing and stuff like that, or are we sticking more to the tunnels now?”

Riddick just glanced at him, but he had those damn goggles down again, so he had no idea what his expression meant. 

“You know,” Xander threw up his hands. “I have had better conversations with slugs. At least I get a load of slime if they don’t like what I’m saying.”

Riddick didn’t answer, but that was mostly because he was paying attention to the one who _had_ responded.

Someone had giggled.

Startled, Xander shifted closer to the source of the sound, a grating a few feet away, and called softly, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

The shaft had fallen silent again, but something in the shadows did move.

A hand on Xander’s chest shoved him back, and he found himself half tucked behind the man, which was a little strange. Was Riddick really trying to protect him from whatever was in the air duct shafts? Shit, maybe Johns _was_ right, Riddick really _did_ pull a mother bear routine on him.

From out of the shadows emerged a small figure, a girl with a dirt and snot smeared face, eyes red from either tears or a lack of sleep. She couldn’t be more than seven or eight, hair half pulled back into short, mostly fallen out pigtails. She snuffled as she got closer, wiping her nose with her sleeve and the back of her hand. “Hi,” she said. “You’re not like the monsters.”

Xander shifted around Riddick, ignoring the man’s low warning growl. “Heya, kiddo. Nope. We’re not monsters.”

“Speak for yourself,” Riddick rumbled.

“Are you running from them too?” she asked, curling the fingers of one hand in the grating that separated them. “Are you from the colony ship, too?”

“Naw, we just got here,” Xander touched her little fingers lightly. She was shaking. “I’m Xander. Who’re you?”

“I’m Lynn,” she said, lisping slightly. “Who’s he?”

“Riddick,” he growled, leaning back on his heels. He looked relaxed and comfortable, but Xander could see that every muscle in his arms was corded and tense, ready to spring into action at any moment.

“Is he your daddy?” she asked, blinking up at Xander in the dim light.

He burst into laughter, then clapped his hand over his mouth to quickly shut himself up with Riddick let out a deep, rumbling warning growl. Eyes still watering slightly from the effort of holding in his laughter, Xander shook his head, hard. “No way. He’s not my dad. My dad’s a _long_ way away, on a different planet. Riddick’s my... well, he’s not old enough to be my dad, anyway.”

Lynn considered that for a moment, then suggested, “Is he your boyfriend, then?”

As Xander spluttered out some sort of a response, absolutely flabbergasted by that question, Riddick shifted forward to hook his hand over Xander’s shoulder, tugging him back and away from the grill. “We’re wasting time. We need to keep moving.”

“Wait!” Lynn clung to the grate.

Xander turned immediately. “Yeah?”

“You’re the good guys, right?” She asked, voice trembling. “I saw what you did earlier. I was watching. You killed the monster.”

He glanced at the other man, hating how unreadable his face was. He hadn’t thought anyone had seen the incident at the security gate, where Xander just kept watch and Riddick killed with a hairpin, then dragged the body into the shadows. “Yeah. We’re sort of the good guys. Well, I am. I’m a total white hat. Him... not so much. But he can be good, sometimes. He’s definitely not a _bad guy_ , anyway.”

“Can you help me find my mom?” she asked, voice tremulous. 

Xander hesitated. 

“People I help end up dead,” Riddick said, ominously, his grip on Xander’s shoulder tightening.

“Yeah, at this rate, I won’t last long either,” he muttered, then turned back to Lynn. “Where is your mother? What happened to her?”

“They caught her,” she whispered. “I’m scared they’ll make her into a monster, just like they did to daddy.” She hiccoughed, swiping at her nose with her sleeve again. Xander wished the grate wasn’t there, so he could reach out and just give her a hug. “The monsters are scary. The ones with the red lights on their faces aren’t so bad, because you can hide from them, but the ones with the white lights on their faces... they’re the worst. They’re smart... and those ones can talk.”

“Some of those zombie cyborg robotic Terminators can _talk_?!” He gaped at Riddick like the man should know what he meant. “That’s not good.”

A slightly mechanical version of a person’s voice suddenly echoed through the tunnels, an ominous “I thought I heard something, just going to check it out,” then the sound of pistons working hard and heavy feet falling flat footed on the metal. Xander hissed a quick warning to hide to Lynn, then bit down on his tongue to keep from making any noise when Riddick abruptly jerked him back further into the air ducts. Holding his breath, Xander tried to focus on the sounds of the pistons and an abnormally loud heart beat and not on the chest he was pressed into - again - and the heartbeat he could feel thumping into his back. His mouth tasted like fear and iron-rich blood and more adrenaline than he was pretty sure a sane person should experience in this situation.

There was something warm running down his jaw, and it wasn’t until it dropped with a soft _plit plat_ on the air duct floor that he noticed the flaring scent of iron and realized it was his own blood, from biting his tongue.

“It was nothing, I guess.” The voice said, then, “I’m disconnecting now.”

Silence fell over the area, and Xander just breathed slowly in and out of his nose, trying to make his way too loud heart slow down or quiet, or something, because it was pounding so hard he could feel it throughout his whole body, not just his chest. He was still bleeding a little, little droplets dropping to the floor, but he was sort of afraid of the alarmed panic in his chest, that maybe if he unclenched his teeth from his tongue he’d end up screaming or something. So he waited until Riddick moved, then slowly shifted away from him so that he wasn’t awkwardly pressing into the other’s chest anymore, and slowly unclenched his jaw.

Blood flooded his mouth, awkwardly, and Xander swallowed thickly, closing his eyes.

And jumped hard enough to thump his head on the top of the air shaft, with a metallic ringing sound, when Riddick’s thumb ran along just under Xander’s lip. He looked up, sharply, pupils blown wide as he tried to see in the dim light of the air vent, watching with a slightly hanging jaw as Riddick sucked his thumb clean of his blood, frowning slightly. 

“What are you doing?” he squeaked. 

“You don’t taste like fear,” was all Riddick said, then he started shifting forward in the tight metal tunnel. “Come on. We need to get moving.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“If you put me in one of these cells, I am going to stab you.”

Xander hated this ship.

The captain was crazy. If the little scene they’d witnessed in their ship hadn’t hinted at that, the scene in the cells confirmed it. She was apparently planning on turning Johns over for the bounty, which sort of sucked, but Riddick didn’t seen even the slightest bit phased by that. And why should he, the guy was gonna turn _him_ in for the bounty. But still, the next problem was that she knew Riddick was on board, and was bound and determined to find him for the bounty, too. Xander wondered idly if they knew he’d been there, in Butcher Bay, too, but decided that if they did, he really didn’t want to know. 

But Xander was covered in blood now, and it wasn’t even the captain’s blood, which might have been sort of satisfying.

Riddick just kept killing people, and even that wouldn’t be so bad, except that Xander seemed to have a magical ability to be in the way of the blood splatter. Every time. He was gripping the hair pin tightly himself now, as Riddick had killed yet another guard and stolen his knives. They had a handle, then the blade curled up and over the hands. He had no idea what they were called or if wielding them like a pair of bladed brass knuckles was even the correct way to use them, but watching Riddick slice people open with them was starting to give Xander the same sort of bloodthirsty murderous rushing tingle that watching Buffy stake vampires used to give him. It was the pounding rush of blood in his ears that made him want to sink his own blade in an enemy, make their blood gush hot and iron-rich over his hand.

He was starting to think that either something was seriously wrong with him, or space was driving him mad.

Only he’d felt this way back in Sunnydale, too.

Maybe Buffy had been right about him having a demon parent or something.

Now, though, he meant it.

Lifting his chin, stubbornly, Xander glared up at Riddick, meeting those damn goggles with his eyes and not even caring for once. He was not backing down on this. The cells were small and nasty and he’d seen the mulling way Riddick had been considering them. “I know that it’d get me out of your non-existent hair and all, but if you put me in there, I will stab this hair pin straight into your heart!”

“In my heart.” Riddick repeated.

“Yes. And don’t try me on this one,” he held it up, pleased with himself that his hands didn’t even tremble. “I know very well where the heart is.”

Faster than Xander could seem to react, Riddick jerked him forward by the hand holding the hair pin, holding him tight and close, the point of the little crude weapon pressed to the larger man’s chest. Right over his heart. “Are you sure you have a guaranteed kill if you stab me there, kid? Go ahead.”

Xander hesitated - of course he did, Riddick must have known he was going to - and the other man twisted his wrist.

He didn’t cry out when he dropped the hairpin, but he did gasp when Riddick twisted him around, tugging him back into the taller man’s chest again. Riddick leaned closer, breath puffing across Xander’s ears as he spoke, voice a low rumble that Xander could feel through his back and straight down his spine. “Listen good, kid. You want a guaranteed kill, go for the sweet spot.” His fingers slipped up Xander’s spine, and he jumped. Riddick still held him firmly in place, though. “Fourth vertebrae up,” he tapped it, “And just to the left. Stick the knife deep and hard, then pull it out.” He leaned closer, his lips actually brushing Xander’s ear. “Gushes like a human well.”

Xander sucked in a sharp breath, every nerve in his body tingling, on high alert.

Then abruptly the weight and heat and heartbeat at his back were gone, and he stumbled forward, startled.

And stumbled right into the only cell without the glowing red force field.

Which snapped up again the second he was through it.

Xander slammed his hands into the barrier, not even giving up with it started to crackle and sizzle and he could feel his hands burning. “Riddick! _Riddick_!”

The man was standing at the controls, and just arched a brow. But there was _just_ the hint of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.

“You son of a bitch!” Xander slammed his hands against the barrier again.

Riddick stepped closer, stooping for a moment to scoop up the hair pin. He turned it over and over in his fingers for a moment, considering it, then stepped closer. Flicking open a metal tray by the door of Xander’s newly appointed cell, presumably a drawer meant for food or something, he dropped the hair pin neatly inside, then slid the drawer shut. The second it opened on his side, Xander snatched up the pin, and jabbed at the force field with it. The barrier crackled and hissed, but held. “I will stab you so fucking hard!” Xander yelled, too angry to really be rational and remember that Riddick was also - hopefully - going to be the man to let him out of here later. “No, fuck it! Forget the knife! I’ll just gouge those stupid eyes out! Dammit!”

Riddick set his hand against the force field, which didn’t crackle on his side, and said, simply. “People I help end up dead.”

“I can take care of myself, dammit!” Xander raged, slamming his palms against the surface. 

“Stay here,” Riddick ordered, and turned away to go to another cell. He ignored Xander’s continued shouting and screaming and slamming himself bodily against the barrier, howling in rage when he was unable to get through.

Eventually, he gave up, and slumped to sit on the low bed/bench thing in the cell. Riddick was still talking to someone in one of the other cells, which he supposed meant that it couldn’t have been a terribly _long_ temper tantrum. There were times, especially when he was a kid, that Xander used to have temper tantrums that would go on for hours. Intense, irrational rages where he’d just break everything he could reach and scream until he was hoarse and pound on walls until his hands were a bloody bruised mess and he’d finally just let his mother put him to bed, shaking and spent. Up until his teens he’d done this, pretty much until about the time Buffy showed up, and he started taking out his pent up anger on vampires instead of during stupid temper tantrums. Good to know they were still about as effective as every other temper tantrum he’d ever had.

Which meant not at all.

There was a soft sound at the far end of his cell, and Xander bolted up, looking up sharply.

There was an air vent at the end of the little space, a little metal grate barely large enough to fit a hand through, nothing else, but he could see little fingers curled around the grating.

“Lynn?” he asked softly, standing so that he could reach the grate himself. “Lynn? Issat you?”

“Xander?” she wrapped a finger around his index, holding onto him. “They caught you too! Just like mommy!”

“Well, not exactly... um... Riddick put me in here.” He cleared his throat.

“Did you fight?” She whispered.

“I ah... I _think_ he’s trying to keep me safe by keeping me in here. So I can’t get myself in trouble,” he rolled his eyes, searching for her face in the dim light the cell let filter into the air shaft. He could just make out her eyes if he focused. “If I’m all locked away, I can’t get in trouble.”

“So you’re in time out,” she considered that.

Xander snorted, smiling up at her. “Something like that.”

“Can I help?” She asked softly.

“Stay safe. Stay somewhere safe and quiet and don’t let anyone catch you,” he said firmly, quickly. “Make sure that no one sees you, okay?”

Lynn hesitated, then nodded. “Can... can you tell my mommy something for me, if you see her?”

Xander hesitated, and nodded. 

“Tell her I miss her?” She asked, softly, eyes wet. The longer he looked up at her in the darkness of the little cell the more he could see little bits of her, see that both of her pigtails had fallen out now, and her hair was hanging in short, half uncurled ringlets. 

“Yeah, promise I will,” he murmured, tapping her fingers lightly. 

“I’ll watch if I can,” she said softly, squeezing his fingertip, then darted away on her hands and knees, little metallic sounds echoing behind her as the metal bent slightly under her weight, then the sound faded a few seconds later when she hit the main ducts and the metal was thicker there. Strong enough.

He sighed softly, and sank down to sit on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees, head hanging between his knees.

Maybe stabbing Riddick _was_ a touch overkill.

He was going to tear his ears off and shove them down his throat.

  
 

\---

  
 

Honestly, Xander wasn’t even sure how long he was in the cell. 

But he noticed when it opened.

He rolled off of the little bench, crouched low for a moment as he waited to make sure that there were no guards waiting just outside of the doors. Wouldn’t that be an ironic end, to have all the gates of the prison cells open wide and then have all the guards standing in the space around the place, ready to shoot them all up? So he waited, but when he started seeing a couple of the people moving in the hallway, he moved out. 

There was a woman moving carefully at the edges of the room, trying to get to the man he’d seen Riddick come to speak to twice since he’d left the first time, but there was another man trying to get to her. 

And that other man looked like he wasn’t going to just have a chat about the current situation.

Xander tugged the hair pin out of his belt, squeezing it tightly as he jogged up to the woman’s side. She started, gaping at him, and he just curled his fingers around her upper arm, trying to get her to hustle towards the older man - Dacher, he was pretty sure he was called. Yeah, Riddick had called him Dacher once. Yes, he’d been listening hard every time Riddick had come back into the room in the hopes that the man was going to let him out, dammit. 

“What are you _doing_?” She demanded, trying to tug her arm away from him. Honestly, that was kind of smart of her.

“We need to hurry,” Xander said, tugging her up to Dacher, who sort of accepted her quietly, as though he was the protector taking the charge from him. “There’s a sicko trying to get here.”

“You were with Riddick,” Dacher frowned at Xander, an arm wrapped protectively around the woman’s shoulder.

“Yep. I guess you could call him my friend. If Riddick has friends. And then if he has a habit of throwing his friends into jail cells to protect them.” He rolled his eyes, and shifted the hair pin quickly in his hand so that he was holding it like a stake, not like a knife, and turned to put his back towards the pair, facing down the man hurrying towards them, eyes wide and slightly maniacal. 

“Back off, pretty boy,” he slurred, spitting as he spoke. “I want that tight little pussy behind you. But I’ll take you both if you don’t move outta my way, _bitch_.”

“I’m not a girl,” Xander grinned wolfishly at him, mostly just baring his teeth. It wasn’t much of a smile.

“Do I look like I _care_?!” He spat, and lunged towards Xander, trying to get to the woman he was standing in front of.

Time seemed to slow down a little, and Xander tightened his grip on the metal and wood hair pin, shifting his weight forward onto his toes. Shifting his centre of balance gave him a better angle with less need to move, and he fell into an old, familiar pose - and jammed the spike straight into the man’s shoulder. He didn’t really want to _kill_ him, not really. He might have killed dozens of undead vampires, but that was different. This guy, as twisted and fucked up as he was, was _human_ , so he just slammed it deep into his shoulder and watched with satisfaction when the man reeled back, crying out in horrified pain. 

Xander shifted slightly, jerking the hair pin back out of the man’s chest, blood running back along his wrist and down his arm as he held it ready to stab again. “Want some more?”

“You little cunt!” He screamed, and bolted up to attack Xander again.

The teenager shifted to the side, just slightly, and slammed his elbow down, hard, into the man’s temple.

He crumpled to the floor without another step or another sound.

“Who _are_ you?!” 

The woman gaped at Xander, and Dacher grinned, reaching forward to clap his hand down on Xander’s shoulder. “Good job there, kid? Military?”

“Slayer’s best friend,” He grinned briefly, swiping the hair pin on his cargos to wipe the blood off. “And I’m Xander, ma’am. Is it ma’am? I think someone around here called you a doctor.”

“Doctor Silverman,” she agreed, still looking stunned.

“We gotta get moving,” Dacher spoke up, frowning slightly as he checked a small data pad he held in his hand, flicking through several different things on its screen. “I’ve lost contact with Riddick, I think something interfered. I’m working on getting him a ship working for him, we really need to get moving if we’re going to get there before he just leaves. Hell, he might do that anyways. We gotta get going.”

“God, Riddick _would_ do that, too,” Xander muttered, keeping a tight grip on the hair pin as he followed Dacher. “Lead on. You seem to know where you’re going more than I do, anyway.”

He nodded, and led the way.

Xander was starting to wish he had more eyes, that he could look more directions at once. There were drones and guards and fuck even giant robot suits that people were inside of and shooting from inside of. His stolen hair pin wasn’t much of a weapon against these advancing guards, so he was relieved when one of the first guards that tried to hunt them down wasn’t really expecting a teenager willing to snatch the knife off of his belt and shove the man off the edge of a metal walkway down into the empty space of the holds. Slipping the hairpin into his belt, he held the knife tighter in his hands and followed Dacher’s lead. Dacher was good at distracting the drones long enough for him to knock them down, plunge the knife in the back of their necks.

He supposed he should have felt guilty, but they were dead bodies kept going by robotics. They weren’t much different than vampires, not really. 

And it helped him feel a little better about his grumpiness to stab drones and stop their loud heartbeats. He didn’t know why he kept hearing their heartbeats, anyway, but they were too loud, they seemed to actually hurt his ears. Stabbing them helped.

“Has anyone seen Lynn?” Dr. Silverman asked, one of her hands lightly resting on the back of Dacher’s shoulder, using him to guide herself. 

“She’s in the vents,” Xander answered, turning at another sound. No one was there. “She’s safe, she says. Sort of. Safer than we are, probably. Don’t worry, she’s keeping an eye on us, once we get to the ship, she’ll be there. She’s been everywhere I’ve been, lately, so...”

She nodded, but her eyes still looked worried, scanning.

Which was why she was looking to their left, when Xander was still looking to the right, where Dacher was pointing towards the hangers, pointing out a ship he thought would work in Bay 15. As the men looked at the ship through the dirty, scratched glass window that opened out into the bay, she cried out, startled.

Xander spun, too hard, almost tumbling in his attempt to get around as quickly as possible. 

Jaylor.

The tattooed son of a bitch that he _thought_ he’d taken care of with that elbow to the temple - Buffy or Riddick hitting him like that probably would have killed him, dammit - but apparently a mere regular mortal whacking him didn’t hit hard enough, and now Jaylor was trying to get at Dr. Silverman again. He had a knife, who knew where the hell he’d gotten it from, and was slashing at the woman, who was struggling to hide behind Dacher. 

“Woah, buddy boy, stop right there. You’re pulling a little crazy hyena bit here, no touching the pretty lady,” Xander stepped forward, quickly, knife in hand, ready. He didn’t want to stab anyone, at least not anyone _alive_ , but if he had to stab a creepy guy to stop him from attacking people, he’d do it. 

“Get out of my way, _pussy_ ,” Jaylor spat. “Or I will beat your fucking brains in and fuck your fucking corpse.”

“I kind of think you’re going to do it anyway,” he muttered, shifting the knife slightly so that it was in a better position for full on stabbing. He sort of wish he’d done more stabbing than staking, now that the issue was actually coming up. 

Jaylor grinned, nasty teeth exposed. Fuck. Did no one in space actually brush their damn teeth? “Pretty much.”

Then he leapt at Xander.

He grunted when the man slammed into him, barely managing to avoid being stabbed by the knife Jaylor was trying to shove in his eye. It slammed into the wall just beside Xander, and he was able to use the moment that the man was trying to rip it back out of the solid obstruction to get away from him. 

“Jaylor, it’s Jaylor, right? Wait, you really don’t need to do this. I’m sure there are tons of women that would actually _want_ you, you know, so...”

“Who fucking _cares_ if they _want_ me?” he sneered. “S’not like I want ‘em live...”

“Wait.” Xander hesitated, blinking at him, stunned into stillness. “You’re into like... necrophilia? Like you want to kill her, _then_ rape her?”

Jaylor spat on the floor. “Obviously.”

“...that’s gross,” Xander declared, blinking at him still. “That’s like... vampire gross. _Ew_.”

The man sneered, and leapt forward again, and this time his knife found Xander’s blood.

Hissing, furious at himself for getting distracted enough to get caught, Xander wrapped his hand tightly around the part of the knife still emerging from his upper arm and held on tightly, refusing to let Jaylor pull it free, forcing it still in his arm, then lifted his knee, slamming his foot into Jaylor’s gut, slamming him back.

Jaylor roared in anger, staggering back to his feet, teeth bared. “You son of a bitch, I will - “

Whatever completely nasty fate Jaylor had planned for Xander, he never got to hear about it. Because that was about the same time that several guards - not drones, but actual guards - burst around the corner, and they scattered. Really, it was the smart plan - Jaylor had pissed off enough of the guards to know not to be around them, Dr. Silverman was scared enough of the guards to actually rabbit, Dacher was trying to distract them from the hanger so that Riddick could actually get to Bay 15 without interference, and Xander had a very strong survival instinct. A survival instinct that was completely wired backwards, apparently, because he didn’t run _away_ from the guards, he ran _into_ the guards, and started swiping at every one he could reach with the knife. Stupid, maybe. The only way to distract them long enough for Dacher and Dr. Silverman to get somewhere safe, probably. And the terrible male approximation of Xena’s trademark yell? That was really just solely for effect.

So he did it. Xander always had been accused of having more loyalty than brains anyway.

He was pretty sure he’d injured at least three of them enough to need medical care before one of them finally managed to pin him to the plas-teel floor, and he finally let out a cry of pain when Jaylor’s knife was shoved deeper into his right arm. That fucking hurt.

“Wait!” 

Xander froze for just a second, then bucked the man pinning him down right off of him, and grasped Jaylor’s knife, ripping it out of his arm. Giles’ in-depth first aid lessons had taught him that this was definitely the very wrong thing to do (“Always leave the object in the wound, Xander, until you have it bandaged and have a tourniquet on it so that you don’t just bleed out!” “But it was a pencil in my leg, Giles! I had to take it out!” “If you bleed to death, I shall not be to blame.” “Eh, just feed me to Deadboy, then. Guy probably hasn’t had a fresh pint in years.”) but he needed another weapon, and when he’d been thrown down, his knife had scattered like the other prisoners had. 

Bloody knife in hand, he half rose, then froze again when someone slammed the barrel of a gun against his forehead.

“I know that face.” One of the guards said, and dug a data pad out of the front of his uniform, ignoring the way Xander was grinding his teeth, tempted to try to run at them anyway. He _could_ get lucky. “Fucking knew it. He’s on the security footage of that ship we took. He was with Riddick.”

“Who me?” Xander spoke up, still holding the bloody knife tightly. “Naw, not me. I’ve never even been on a space ship. Well, except this one, of course. Never been to space. I’m one of them colonists you guys caught a while back. Yep. Never met this Riddick guy. I mean, _is_ he a guy? Could be a chick. Or a dog. Never heard of him.”

“Shut up,” the guard with the gun snapped, thumping it against Xander’s forehead.

“Yes sir. Shutting up sir.” He said, quickly.

“Bring this one to the captain. Two hostages are better than one,” the man smirked, and turned to head back down the hallway. “Hell, maybe he even likes this one more than Johns.”

“He hates me! I ain’t a good hostage!” Xander called, wincing when the men grabbing his arms to haul him up squeezed his wounded arm a little too hard. “He’d as soon kill me as you lot would, so you may as well just leave me here or something because I will be absolutely no use to you. Hell, neither of them like me.”

“I thought you said you’d never heard of Riddick,” the lead guard grinned.

“....never have.” He mentally cursed himself. “But I still don’t think he’d like me. He really wouldn’t like me.”

“Someone shut that kid up.”

“Not a kid! _Xander_!”

But he stumbled along with the guards anyway, trying to keep himself quiet, and wishing he still had a weapon. Both knives were gone, and while he _did_ still have the hair pin in his belt, there was a fucking reason he’d picked up the knives. It wasn’t much _of_ a weapon, not really.

The prison cells, that he’d been so eager to get out of only a few minutes ago - had it really been that recently? - was even more chaotic than it had been before. There were guards in those giant mech suits everywhere, gunning down escapees as they tried to hide, tried to just get anywhere but there. The captain was there, looking smug as shit as she overlooked the chaos, and to Xander’s surprise, Johns was slumped at her feet, still not really conscious. What the hell kind of drugs had they _given_ him, that he was still fighting to wake up, even now? It had been a long time, and he was still fighting to wake up? She narrowed her eyes at the guard as he hauled Xander up to her, as though wondering why the hell he had brought her a bloody prisoner. 

“This one was on the security footage, captain,” the guard said, clearing his throat. “Of the ship we got Riddick and the merc off of.”

Those nasty eyes narrowed as she considered Xander.

He smiled nervously, and waved. “Hi. Don’t know what your buddy here is talking about. I’ve never met this Riddick fellow, though he sounds like a perfectly nasty person perfectly worthy of being hunted down and stuff. I totally respect your need to find this guy. But I’m _really_ no use to you. No use to you at all. I swear I’m no use to you.”

“He knows Riddick, you say?” She glanced at the guard, who perked up a little, showing her the data pad. There was video or something on there, and he hoped to all hell it wasn’t something that would _actually_ make them think he knew Riddick, like the time he’d helped him set his bones, or bringing him food, or - oh god, waking him up just before they were captured. He still didn’t even know why Riddick did it, but he did, and from the look on the captain’s face when she looks at him, she knows now that he did it, too. “Yes, yes he does.”

“No, I swear - “

“Take him with us. I want Riddick to see me kill the little brat in front of him. I want Riddick to know this kid is going to die because of him.”

Xander paled. 

“And based on this...” she flicked her fingers at the pad. “He’ll come for him.”

_Fuck_. Xander thought. _Is this really all I’m good for, anymore? Being used as fucking Riddick bait? I mean, if they’re gonna keep hunting and capturing me, why can’t it be because I’m some kickass bad dude myself? Why is it always cause the mama bear in Riddick won’t let anyone kill me? Dammit_. 

“Come on, princess,” someone grabbed his arm, and he gasped again as they hauled him after the captain.

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander would really like to come up with a smartass comment. He would _really_ like to say something nasty and cutting or at least vaguely sarcastic and something a little funny, something to lighten the mood or even just make himself feel a little better about the fact that his hands were chained behind his back, the heavy metal chain looped around the navigation system of the ship that Riddick was supposed to be escaping with in a few minutes. 

But he couldn’t, because he had a metal bar in his mouth, the strings attached to it tied tight behind his head. It was like a bit, he supposed, pressing hard into the corners of his mouth, pulling his mouth too far open, painful and really humiliating.

Oh yeah, it was a totally classy look, all drooly and tied up. 

Riddick was _totally_ gonna want to save him from this. Not. Hell not. God, he’d be more likely to walk in the room, seeing him there, and turning right back around and walking straight out of the ship.

That was exactly what he needed for rescues.

But Captain Revas was hiding somewhere in the shadows, almost copying Riddick’s shtick, and Xander had no way of warning the man he thought of as a sometimes ally, at least, that she was waiting.

He tugged on the chains again, and winced. It hurt his wrists, the chains digging hard into his bones. 

There was a sound, and he looked up, sharply, startled when Dacher walked into the ship, hurrying. He jerked on the chains, hard, loud enough to make them rattle, and Dacher looked up, sharply, eyes widening. Xander struggled to speak, struggled to tell him to run, to get away, to get the _fuck_ away from here, but Revas had already stepped out of the shadows, and dragged a massive, strangely shaped knife across Dacher’s throat, slitting it open. Xander screamed against the bit, but it came out as a strangled sort of broken sound, and Dacher slumped down, eyes rolling back in his head. 

Revas threw him in the chair, leaving him there so that he looked like he was just trying to control the ship, then she smirked, deviously, and pressed a finger against her lips for silence.

He screamed harder, straining against the chains, which tore and ripped at his wrists and hands, struggling to get free. 

It did no good. 

Riddick stepped into the ship.

Nearly sobbing in frustration, Xander strained harder on the chains, his hands slipping slightly in the restraints. He could get free, if he just struggled hard enough, he’d be able to get loose... Tears were running down his face as he strained to get forward, fighting his own body. He wasn’t _sad_ , they weren’t tears of sorrow, it was tears of sheer frustration and rage and helplessness and fury. It was the only thing he could do as he wrenched at the chains, until he was light headed and dizzy from the blood loss and the strain. But he still kept ripping and wrenching.

The convict saw him doing it, of course. It was easy enough to see Xander struggling against his restraints, and for Riddick, it was hard not to notice. Ever since he’d first shown up, Riddick always seemed to be watching him.

But Riddick wasn’t _looking_ at him, not exactly. 

He was clearly aware that Xander was there, and that he was straining to get free to get to him, but his attention was on the shadows, and even in the midst of his struggling, Xander was thankful as anything that Riddick was smart enough to figure out that Revas was waiting for him.

Riddick snapped out those twisted, curved blades, and when Revas flung herself at him, he met her blow for blow.

Were the circumstances any different, Xander would have loved to just sit down somewhere and just watch Riddick fight and throw himself into the battle, watching eagerly to see exactly how the man dipped and wove and worked, fighting and working and loving it. Living it. Riddick was able to harness so much more of his own body and instincts than any other person he’d ever seen, and fuck, he made Buffy look like a rank amateur. He would have loved to just curl up with a blanket and watch him fight for hours.

But the circumstances _weren’t_ different, and he was chained still, and he strained until his own muscles screamed in protest, finally wrenching his left hand free of the chains. After that, it took no time to rip out his right hand, then jerk the bit out of his mouth and throw it across the room before he dashed forward, just wanting to help. _Somehow_. Anyhow.

Revas didn’t even notice he was there, but Riddick did, lifting his arm just a fraction of an inch more than he might have otherwise to let Xander duck under it.

The Captain’s knife, all carved to have notches up and down the blade, designed to catch other knives and rip them away from their wielder, caught on one of Riddick’s blades, tearing it down and out of his hand. For anyone other than Riddick, that could have been disastrous, and any outsider watching the fight would likely think that Revas had the upper hand right at that moment. But Xander wasn’t an outsider in the fight, he was right in the midst of it, half between Riddick and Revas, and he knew completely that Riddick had allowed the knife to be taken from him, for one reason and one reason only. 

Xander had the captain’s hair pin in his hand, and when Riddick’s hand was empty, he slapped it into the other man’s palm.

He was between the two combatants when Riddick slammed the hair pin in the woman’s throat, straight through the side of her neck and right through her windpipe, blood bubbling up into the space in seconds. Xander got a spray of her blood across his cheek, but he didn’t duck from it. Fuck, this was what he’d been wishing for every other time Riddick had stabbed someone.

Revas tumbled to the floor, and Xander stepped back, panting, wrists bloody and bruised and groaned softly. “Fuck. _Fuck_ , Riddick, that was - _fuck_!”

The man snorted slightly, hooking his curved knives over his belt, then shifted over towards the navigation systems. He seemed to be setting it up to fly, but Xander knew that Revas had already disabled the ship, and he watched him with a dull sort of shock and numbness as the mechanical woman’s voice that was the ship’s computer announced that the ship was not functional. “It’s not going to work, Riddick. She made sure of that.”

He glanced at him, then past him, smirking slightly. “Escape pod.”

Xander glanced at the door Riddick was looking at, eyes lighting up. “See, this is why I think you’re awesome. Because you use that noggin for things other than just a goggle rest. Smart guy.”

He smirked, and walked past him, opening the door. Xander followed him, considering the pod, with its only one seat, and hesitated. “You get in the big seat, and get all strapped in. You’re the big one, after all. I’ll wedge myself into a space.”

Riddick shook his head, but sat, frowning as the restraints clicked into place over his wrists and chest, like some kind of demented roller coaster ride, and he leaned back. “Sit here.”

Xander hesitated. “In your lap?” 

He arched a single brow, waiting.

“I’m starting to think that you aren’t trying to save me at all, you’re just trying to find the most awkward way to embarrass me possible,” Xander muttered, and sat in Riddick’s lap, waiting for him to start the launch. It was an awkward spot to sit, but he’d do it to get the hell off this ship.

“Xander?” a tremulous voice called.

Bolting up, Xander darted out of the capsule, ignoring the mechanical voice which was already starting to give warnings about what an escape launch would mean. Riddick snarled behind him, but he was strapped in the seat, he couldn’t get up to grab Xander even if he tried. 

“Lynn!” he called, reaching out for the little girl. Her eyes were wide and wet, and her hair was held back from her snotty face by just a hair band, now. Her grubby hands reached up towards him, and he scooped her up, holding her tight against his chest as he rushed to get back into the pod, to the man that was waiting. But just as he was about to dart in, the glass door slammed shut, and he howled, slamming his fist on the glass. “Riddick, you son of a bitch, don’t fucking _leave us here_?!”

“Kid - “ Riddick strained against his restraints for a moment, which seemed strange if he was leaving them there, but... but he wasn’t leaving them.

Not on purpose, anyway.

In his rush to grab Lynn, Xander hadn’t even noticed that Revas wasn’t lying on the ground anymore, where Riddick had left her, and that the large puddle of blood she had left was smeared but not enough to really kill a person. She was standing, sort of, hand on the button that closed the doors, teeth bared at Xander and Lynn. Her voice was slurred, hard, distorted by blood and the hole in her throat. “Oh no. I’m just going to _kill_ that cocksucker, but you... I am really going to make you _suffer_.”

There was a rumble under their feet, and Xander looked in horror to the door of the escape pod, but it wasn’t there anymore. It was streaming off into the sky, and Riddick was gone, and they were _left_.

He whimpered, clutching Lynn tighter, but Riddick wasn’t going to come rescue him this time.

Revas coughed, blood spraying from her mouth as she hit the controls for the communicator, her knife pointed at them again as she spoke, blood dribbling down her jaw and neck, the hair pin still buried in her neck. Xander didn’t even know how she was still standing, still moving, still _speaking_. It would have taken a Herculean effort... maybe she was really just _that_ stubborn.

He would have attacked, but he was holding Lynn, and he had to keep her safe. He was all she had left, right now.

“Riddick!” Revas snarled, bloody froth spitting across the room as she spoke. “You fucking think you can get away from me just like that, Riddick? You’ll never escape from me, _never_! You’re _fucked_ , Riddick! Fucked! I’ve got your boy, Riddick, and I got that little girl. You are making them suffer for you, Riddick! They’re going to regret they were ever _born_ because _you_ refused my offer!”

“Go ahead, Revas.” Xander didn’t expect to hear Riddick’s low growl returning on the speaker, crackling and popping slightly over the speakers. “Kill them. Save me doing it.”

“Oh no. I’m not killing them, Riddick.” She snarled at the pair of them. “They are going to suffer. They are going to see a new kind of hell that I reserve just for those I want to _suffer_ _forever_ , Riddick. They’re going to _beg_ you to kill them, but you’re going to die knowing that _you_ are the reason that this boy of yours suffered for the rest of his fucking miserable _life_!”

She hit another series of buttons, and Xander actually cried out when he saw something streak out of the ship’s side, screaming towards Riddick’s escape pod at a rapid rate. “ _No_!”

“Riddick dies,” she snarled, and Xander could only watch in horror through the glass as the missile streaked towards Riddick’s little escape pod, and struck the side of it. There was a flare of light, then the pod changed direction and hurtled towards the little planet they were hovering over. Lynn cried out, and he covered her eyes with his fingers, quickly, trying to keep her from seeing her hero die. He didn’t want to watch Riddick die, either. But he couldn’t look away, not until he saw the pod burn through the atmosphere of the planet. Then, he looked up from the window, pale face haunted as he gaped at Revas.

For the first time in a very, very long time, Xander was at a complete loss for words. He had not a single word to say. 

“You.” She snarled, taking a step towards him, teeth bared in a vicious snarl. There was some movement off to the side, and a medical team rushed into the little ship, presumably to take care of their grievously wounded captain. Xander knew he wasn’t going to be treated himself, so he stayed where he was, holding Lynn tightly, feeling colder inside than he was fairly sure he had ever felt before. “You,” Revas said again, “Are going to suffer. You will know _pain_.”

Xander didn’t respond. But he knew that she was telling the truth. 

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander was pretty sure it was sort of shameful to admit that he’d been rescued by a six year old. But he had been, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to even pretend it wasn’t true.

He’d full on been rescued by a six year old.

He didn’t even know how the hell a six year old manages to rescue a somewhat more mature sixteen year old from a torture chamber, but the kid managed somehow. He remembered drones suddenly turning on the men around the room, violent and bloody, and then one of those drones, the very fucking things they’d been discussing turning him into, lifting him bodily from the table he’d been strapped to, tossing him over their half-mechanical half-dead flesh shoulder, and carrying him down the hall with the same slow, plodding pace they always walked at. 

Xander struggled to get himself somewhat upright, but it was hard when he was actually tossed over someone’s shoulder. He sort of managed to squirm around so that he could at least see where they were going, resting his head heavily on the drone’s shoulder and wishing he was just moving by his own power.

He sighed softly, and reached up to rub blood out of his eye. It made his vision very red and hazy, this blood in his eyes. But this dentist bastard everyone kept threatening the crew members with apparently didn’t _just_ take teeth out. Although he _had_ taken one, come to think of it. There was a nice little _gap_ in his molars now. He was just really glad that no one had decided to take out one of his _front_ teeth, that would have been a lot worse. This way he just had to get a bridge or something. Why was he even _focusing_ on this now, he _should_ be trying to figure out where the hell the robot dead guy thing was taking him. 

Yet another mechanical door _hissed_ open, and he gasped as the thing lifted him up, dropping him into an air vent shaft that was high on the wall. He winced, and sat up, slowly. He was bruised and battered, bloody and slightly broken. Still, he sat up, refusing to be weak about this. Dammit, someone had to be strong around here. And dead boy sure wasn’t going to be strong.

“Xander?”

He started, glancing over at the sound, eyes widening, surprised. “Lynn?”

The little blond girl threw herself into his chest, and he bit down the wince he would have done, just patting her back lightly. “Lynn... thank god you’re all right. I was worried about you. I thought maybe the captain had got a hold of you, too.”

“I hid,” she said, hugging him tightly. “And I wrecked the engines, so that they couldn’t leave without Riddick.”

He sighed softly, closing his eyes. Every muscle in his body hurt, every part of him was strained and stretched too far and he just wanted to curl in a bed a sleep for a month. Hell, he’d even take cryo, just for the ability to sleep, even though he hated everything that cryo was. His senses were all muddled and off, and all he could seem to hear was the thud thud thud of drones walking around the ship, some getting close, some far. But all he could hear was their steps, their heartbeats, and he stopped paying attention, eventually, because he was just exhausted, his ears were too sore to _hear_ , if that was even possible. But Riddick was gone, he knew this completely, knew that he wasn’t about to get rescued by his apparent mama bear again. “Lynn... honey... Riddick isn’t going to be coming back. It was a really sweet thing for you to do, but Riddick isn’t coming back...”

“You have no faith in me.” 

Xander jumped, yelping slightly, startled. There was another fucking drone just under the vents, another massive huge one like the one that had carted him there in the first place, its massive arms reaching up to almost touch him and Lynn. 

“Riddick!” Lynn cried out, delighted, and darted away from Xander, clambering down the arms of the massive drone. “I knew you’d come find us!”

Xander squirmed to the edge of the air vent, looking down at the massive drone with suspicion. “Please tell me they didn’t turn you into a drone? Like... _please_ tell me that it’s not you as a drone?”

“I’m controlling it.” The familiar grumbling voice came from the speakers built into the drone’s body, and now that Xander actually paid attention, it was really _too_ big and too tall to really be Riddick. Thank god. But yeah, it caught him off guard to hear the man’s voice coming from ‘the enemy’. “Get down here.”

“...you’re gonna, what, carry us?”

“Yes.” 

Lynn was scrambling down already, settling behind the drone’s head, in a rough piggy back.

Xander sighed softly, and slid carefully down onto the arm reaching up towards him, crinkling his nose slightly as he slid down the arm that was a strange combination of metal and cold flesh. He reached the drone’s shoulder and settled down on the shoulder, awkwardly, holding onto one of the pieces of armour. “This is awkward. I just want you to know that I object to this on a moral, physical, and spiritual level. Hell, on a grammatical level. I object on every level I can. Has my displeasure with this situation been made clear enough yet?”

“Yes,” Riddick growled, and the drone started walking, thud thud thud. “Hold on.”

Lynn grinned at Xander, eagerly, bumping him a little with her elbow. “Take us to the elevator, Riddick. We can get the elevator working from inside, I found a working ship on the computer. And then we’ll get out of here, right?”

“Yes.” He said, and added, “If the drone is killed, run and hide. _Both_ of you.”

Xander sighed softly. “Me too?”

“Especially you,” he growled. “Lynn is better at taking care of herself.”

“Oi!” he yelped. “I so don’t deserve that! I’m usually pretty good at taking care of myself, really, I just am not very good at being tortured. Being tortured is one of my _triggers_ , it’s one of those things that kind of makes me weak and not really able to fight much. Thanks.”

The drone pushed Xander a little bit higher on his shoulder, but then started shooting when guards appeared around a corner.

Xander gasped, clutching tighter to the armour, squirming closer to Lynn and trying to stay firm on the drone’s shoulder. The arms were shaking slightly because of the machine gun fire, which rocked them both back on the drone’s shoulders. “Watch to the left!” Lynn cried, clinging to the drone’s ears.

Round after round, Riddick used the drone to shoot the guards trying to get to them, leaving those on the drones shoulders to cling at the armour, trying to stay on. 

Following Lynn’s directions, the drone allowed Lynn into the elevator shaft, then it bent to allow Xander to slide off its shoulder. He did, wincing slightly. Resting his hand on the drone’s shoulder, he asked it, quietly, “What now, Riddick?”

“Stay here.”

Abruptly the drone slumped, the white light on its face flicking over to red, denoting that the connection that had been controlling the drone had been broken. It just sort of stood there, instead, face blank and mechanical, and no voice came from it anymore. It was sort of creepy, which was why Xander quickly tugged his hand off of the clammy shoulder, wiping it on his bloody pants.

He looked around, nervously, watching for any threats. He kept expecting to have guards or even that damn Dentist to emerge from the shadows and rip him apart. 

It was Riddick that stepped from the shadows, though.

“Oh thank fucking _god_ ,” Xander gasped, and darted towards the man, not even caring that this was the kind of stupid reaction that one would find in a chick flick, that the only way he could possibly make this any more cheesy was if they were running through a field of daisies, but he didn’t care. He still threw himself across the space, and threw his arms around Riddick’s side, hugging the other man’s arm tight and fast and hard for a moment, then quickly stepped back before the man tried to kill him. “I thought you were dead. I really thought you were dead. I saw the missile hit the pod, and...”

“We’ll talk later,” he said, voice rumbling, and started hurrying towards the elevator. 

Xander, naturally, followed.

“No, really, I was sure that I’d never see you again, I really thought that I was going to be lost in this fucking universe with no one that I know and - did you see something?”

Riddick pushed Xander behind him, again, and he was surprised at how relieved he felt to be shoved around by Riddick again. He’d really thought he was never going to have that again, and as much as he said it irritated him, it did make him feel better. He sort of liked being taken care of, even though it was stupid. 

“Stay back. No matter what happens. No more heroics.”

Xander rolled his eyes. “Yes, dad.”

Riddick gave him a shove, and Xander stumbled back, swallowing. 

It was Revas. Again. She was dressed in some kind of mechanical robotic suit, guns built into her arms. She screamed at Riddick, about how this was all his fault, how she had no mercy left for him, and leapt at him to attack.

The man’s blades slammed into her armour, sparks flying in the air. 

Xander watched from behind a large crate, biting his lip as he did, considering. Riddick wasn’t wasting time now, it wasn’t going to be a drawn out fight this time, not like the last time he’d fought Revas. He just fired at the elevator button, forcing the doors open, then fired at Revas’ feet, again and again, forcing her back, shooting her in the chest at least twice, until Xander sucked in a sharp breath when he finally got the plan - and Revas tumbled back into the elevator shaft. 

He ignored the orders he’d been given before and hurried forward, leaning over Riddick’s shoulder when the man caught her hand. “Riddick?” he questioned quietly.

Riddick’s face was unreadable, almost mask like. 

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Revas said, quietly, looking exhausted. She looked _old_ suddenly. “Just - just don’t forget me.”

Her fingers slipped from the man’s, and Xander found himself twisting his fingers in Riddick’s shirt again as Revas tumbled down the elevator shaft, and into the darkness. He wondered if Riddick could keep seeing her long after Xander couldn’t anymore. Small fingers slipped into his, and Xander glanced down at Lynn, who glanced up at him, quietly. 

He squeezed her fingers, gently.

“Come,” Riddick growled a few moments later, and led the way to the elevator Lynn had hijacked the programming of. 

Xander was more than happy to follow.

  
 

\---

“ _And you will have all the pretty little horses_...”

Lynn was singing as the elevator dropped slowly down into the hanger bay, swinging the hand she had linked with Xander’s. It hurt like all fuck, but he wasn’t about to stop her. The little girl was _happy_. Considering everything that had happened, he figured that was a pretty good thing.

He smiled down at her, pleased, then glanced up at Riddick. The man still looked stern and serious, but his shoulders had almost imperceptibly relaxed.

Riddick was happy, too.

He leaned over a little, bumping Riddick’s arm lightly with his own, grinning when the man glanced at him. “We made it, big guy. Mostly intact and minus one bounty hunter, plus one kindergartener. We’re both alive, Revas is finally dead, and _I’m_ out of a prison cell. I still owe you a stabbing for that, you know.”

“I’ll remember that,” he rumbled.

“You’d better. Cause I got a memory like an elephant. I never forget.” Xander poked him in the chest. “I’m only not stabbing right now because we _just_ survived that. You deserve a little break.”

“What’s an elephant?” Lynn asked, curiously.

Xander blinked. “You’ve never seen an elephant?”

She shook her head.

“Oh. Well...” he crouched beside her, trying to think of how to explain it. It had never occurred to him that any child might have never heard of one. “It’s this giant four legged animal, all grey, with _giant_ funny ears,” He mimed giant flapping ears with his hands. “And a super long nose that it can use like a hand, it can pick things up with its nose.”

“That sounds weird,” she blinked, wide eyed.

“They are kinda weird,” he admitted. “But they make a sound like a trumpet, and they pick leaves off trees with their nose - it’s called a trunk - and people even ride them.”

“Wow!” She seemed to be warming up to this idea more, now. “What planet are they on?”

“My planet,” He shrugged. “Earth.”

Riddick’s eyes snapped to look at him, sharply, and Xander glanced up at him, surprised by the reaction.

“What?”

“You can’t be from _Earth_!” Lynn scoffed. “You’re smart!”

He blinked at her, confused. “Uh... thanks? I... think? I mean, that’s not something I get accused of on a regular basis or anything, but...”

Riddick snorted.

“No lip from you, mister,” he said, not looking up, and ruffled Lynn’s loose, fine hair. “Well, pumpkin, I figure we can get to know each other a lot better, now, and I can show you that I ain’t smart. And I’ll tell you about more of the fun creatures we got on earth, kay?”

“Kay,” she smiled back at him. 

For a moment, he really thought everything was going to be all right. Sure, he was trapped in space and away from his mom and friends, but he was off the hellmouth, away from his dad, and as friends went, Riddick was tolerable and Lynn was fucking adorable. He’d find a way home, eventually, but until he did, he was pretty set. Things weren’t terrible.

Then the elevator reached the hanger bay and the gunfire started.

Bullets sprayed across the elevator platform. At least three hit Riddick, and the man took a half step backwards, blood misting in the air for a moment. He grunted slightly, but he was already moving, swinging the rifle that he still had slung by the strap over his back, returning fire as he charged the guards down, tearing them apart with the returned gunfire. Apparently, this group had been sent here to guard the ships, but hadn’t been turned on by the drones.

Xander had dropped to his stomach when he’d heard the gunfire, and scrambled to his feet. “C’mon, Lynn! We’ve got to go!”

She didn’t rise.

“ _Lynn_! Come on, being scared won’t help, we have to _go_!”

He scrambled back to grab her shoulders, to tug her to her feet, but she didn’t follow him up. She was heavy, too heavy, and when he pulled her up, her head rolled heavily back on her shoulders, eyes unfocused and glazed.

Xander gaped at her, stunned, not even seeming to realize that her blood was trickling over his fingers and down his arms.

She wasn’t moving.

They’d shot her.

The mother _fuckers_ had shot her.

There were more gunshots, more shouting, the cries of the dying. Things moved and ebbed and flowed around them, and Xander didn’t notice any of it.

He didn’t even seem to notice when someone’s hands closed around his arms and hauled him to his feet. When they knocked Lynn’s limp and slowly cooling body out of his hands, however, he cried out, struggling. Slamming his fists into Riddick’s chest, he cried out, “Not without Lynn, we fucking saved her, it’s not fucking fair to just _leave_ her here - “

He ignored his cries, and just picked Xander up, ignoring his struggles - which were becoming increasingly violent - and hustled the teenager towards the ships.

Johns was leaning out of one of them, bent so that he could see them under the bulkhead. He looked like absolute hell, bloody hair matted to his forehead, dark circles under his eyes. When he spotted Riddick hustling them closer, he waved them closer, calling, “Come on, you asshole, get your ass in here! There’s chatter on the grid that they’re sending reinforcements!”

Riddick hauled Xander into the ship itself, and all but threw him onto one of the chairs.

He slumped down into the seat, eyes wide and unseeing, as unfocused as Lynn’s had been. He didn’t look up when Johns waved a hand in front of his face, and didn’t react when Riddick snapped a set of seat-belt style restraints on him, strapping him into his seat. Xander just sort of stared into space, face blank.

“What the hell happened to him?” Johns demanded.

“Get us out of here,” Riddick snapped.

Johns arched a brow, and smirked slightly at the convict’s back before he dropped into the captain’s seat and set the ship to leave the Athena.  
  
[The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/47383.html)  


 

 

 

 


	5. White Rabbit - The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill

  


  
**White Rabbit - The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill**

 

“I suppose you’ve lost any last shred of respect you might have had for me, huh?”

Riddick didn’t look up from sharpening his curved blades. He didn’t even know why the hell Johns had let him keep them, other than maybe he was so drugged out he hadn’t even noticed. Johns had given himself something like a triple dose about ten minutes after they were clear of the Dark Athena, and promptly passed out in his chair. Xander had sort of gotten less comatose around the same time, but he’d refused to seek Riddick out until he gave himself a long, stern talking to in the mirror.

He couldn’t believe how much he’d fallen apart when Lynn had died. Death was something he’d seen his whole life, what with living in Sunnydale. Hell, he’d killed his best friend a couple years ago. But he’d fallen apart, this time. Completely. 

He sat quietly on the floor across from Riddick, folding his legs, resting his hands on his crossed ankles. 

The other had his goggles pushed up onto his forehead, and glanced up slightly at him, considering him for a moment with those pale blue silver eyes. He considered him seriously for a piece, then lowered his head again, returning to sharpening his blades. 

“Can I help?” Xander asked softly. 

The other was silent for another moment, then slid one of the combat knives the guards had been carrying towards Xander, and another of the stones he seemed to be using to sharpen and polish the knives. 

He smiled slightly, relieved to have something useful to do with his hands. Spitting on the stone to wet it, he started sliding it across the blade, sharpening it. It was a comforting thing to fall into, a soothing thing, to run the stone along the blade, a soft sound of grating as he slowly took off thin layers of metal to get it sharp. Even in Sunnydale, he’d always felt better if he was carving stakes or sharpening spears. Apparently being in space made no difference, because sitting there in silence on the floor, falling into the rhythmic motion of sharpening the blade relaxed him. He felt like _himself_ again.

A hand on his stopped him, and he looked up, blinking, surprised. 

“It’s sharp,” Riddick said. 

Xander flushed, and set the blade down, carefully, clearing his throat. “Sorry. I got kind of distracted. Makes me feel better to do something useful, you know?”

“Sharpen this one.” He handed Xander another knife, calmly. “One that might actually need some work.”

He laughed softly, and started to work on this one, falling into the rhythm, quickly. “Thanks for not just chasing me off. I mean, I know you’re probably pissed because I went all stupid and catatonic and sort of attacked you and everything, but... it was... it broke me, I guess.”

He grunted, frowning slightly. 

“I know,” Xander murmured, softly. “It’s pathetic. What kind of warrior goes all catatonic when someone dies. I mean... yeah, she’s a kid. I think it’s because she was so _little_ and I thought we’d _saved_ her, you know? I mean, she’s a little _girl_ , and we _saved_ her. We saved this little girl from this terrible fate and being turned into some kind of fucking baby drone or something and what happens? She’s fucking shot by a guard! By some random fucking shit guard who was trying to shoot you and me! I mean, she was collateral damage! Who the hell deserves that?! I just - Riddick, she was so small and... when I picked her up, she didn’t move... fuck, all that and she was killed by fucking accident.”

“Any good warrior doesn’t go dead like that.”

“I know.” Xander murmured, softly. 

“You’re no warrior.”

He cleared his throat, and slid the stone along the blade, carefully, still working. “Yeah. I know. I’ve never been a warrior. I’ve been... warrior adjacent. Friend of warriors. Been just a normal freak that manages to attract trouble and get other people in even more trouble and I try to fight and everyone just says ‘stay the fuck out of battle, Xander, that’s going to be better for everyone’. I’m not a warrior for good reason, I guess.”

“No one tried to teach you?”

Xander looked up, hesitating. “What, to fight? No. No one’s ever tried to teach me to fight. I’m an epic failure at fighting, Riddick, that would be sort of suicidal for any trainer.”

“Bullshit.”

He frowned, considering him for a moment. “Um... how is that bullshit? I’m clumsy. I mean, if I was trained, I might be _slightly_ less likely to cut off my own hands in the middle of a fight, but getting to _be_ trained makes it more likely that I’d cut off my hands before I even got there.”

Riddick set the stone down on the floor, then flipped the curved blade over, offering the handle to Xander. “Take it.”

He blinked at him, but slowly took it from him, curling his hands around the handle. “Why?”

“Tell me about it.”

Xander glanced up at him, frowning slightly, but considered it, thoughtfully. He weighed it carefully in his palm, sort of flicking it at the air as though he was actually wielding it, then leaned back, considering Riddick for a moment. “It’s a well designed weapon, really. You can use it as a stabbing weapon or as a punching weapon, really, and these notches, well, they’re used to either rip and tear, or to catch someone else’s weapons, and rip them away. You really have to know what you’re doing, though, to be able to use it like that.” He tilted his hand up. “It’d be really easy to injure yourself with these, if you aren’t careful. It’s not the kind of thing you could just pick up and play with.”

Riddick nodded, calmly, still looking at Xander with a stern, silvery gaze. 

“I’d never be able to use this. I’d end up hurting myself more than anything else.”

The other flicked the other of the bladed pair up, striking the curved blade against the one Xander held. 

Xander gaped at him. “What was that for?”

“Protect yourself.” He clicked the blades together again, harder this time. 

“We’re sitting on our asses on the floor,” Xander gaped at him. “You really want to have a fight on the floor?”

Riddick didn’t answer, but slammed the blade into his again, even harder. Hard enough to make Xander’s whole body rock back from the force of it. 

His eyes narrowed, and he struck back.

The convict smirked, looking sort of sadistically pleased that someone was actually pushing back for once, and flicked his knife up, actually grinning when Xander twisted his hand to meet the thrust, blade ringing against blade. Metal on metal, the parrying of curved blades started working faster and faster as they rushed faster into the battle. It wasn’t really a fight, or even just a sparring round. It was an angry, furious fight that didn’t end with either of them intending to kill the other. There wasn’t even a need for injury. It was just something done for the lust for battle, for the love of the fight itself. 

Xander was grinning as he shifted up onto his knees so that he could put more of himself into the stupid little battle, actually laughing when Riddick matched him, move for move. His heart was pounding in his chest, hard and fast and eager.

He loved it.

Ducking under one of Riddick’s wider moves, knowing that the other wasn’t trying hard, that the other was letting him hold his own even though he probably never would if Riddick really tried to kill him, Xander scrambled up to his feet, laughing as he darted out of the other’s way. Leaping up onto one of the benches, he used the height to get above him, and wasn’t surprised when Riddick surged straight up from the floor to meet his blade again. Everything about this moment made him feel _alive_ and whole and made his blood sing with joy. Just a few hours before, he’d been trapped in his own guilt, that a little girl that had trusted him was dead _because_ she trusted him, but now, he was revelling the idea of being alive again.

Riddick slammed the blade against Xander’s, then snagged his shirt with his other hand, ripping him off the bench and slamming him down to the floor. Blade to Xander’s throat, the man bared his teeth, almost grinning. “Give up?”

“Never,” Xander gasped, and twisted under him, ducking away from the blade and scrambling to his feet. 

The other tackled him from behind, and he yelped as he was slammed down to the floor, pinned under the other’s superior weight, breathless as he tried to draw in a lung-full of air. Riddick pinned him down, heavier, one hand heavy on the back of Xander’s neck as he nipped at his ear with sharp, snapping teeth, making the teenager jump, startled. “Good,” he rumbled, his voice reverberating through Xander’s back. “No respect for those who give in.”

He swallowed, and twisted slightly, glancing back at him. “Face it. You just like people who give a fight.”

He grinned, snapping at Xander’s ear again.

“Freak,” Xander snorted, and bucked under him, trying to throw the convict off. It didn’t work, not exactly, but the larger man did shift off of him, crouching behind him on the floor, smirking at Xander as he watched him. Rolling onto his back, he sat up properly, panting slightly as he smirked at the other man. “Damn, that was - that was fucking _awesome_.”

“I told you. Bullshit.” Riddick settled back on his heels, considering Xander with a smirk. “One day you will learn to appreciate your instincts. Learn them, harness them, push them. You are not like other people. Celebrate it, don’t fear it.” 

“Riddick,” he said, quietly. “I ain’t special.”

“Never said you were.” He smirked, and stood, offering him his hand. Xander slowly took it, and the taller man jerked him up, still holding his hand for a moment, considering him thoughtfully. There was a torn expression on the other’s face, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t just quite bring himself to say it. 

Xander hesitated, and lifted his jaw, stubbornly. He wasn’t going to give in, not in this.

Riddick’s jaw clenched tightly, and though he squeezed Xander’s hand very, very tightly, he actually dropped to one knee. 

“Dammit, stubborn look doesn’t mean get down on one knee, Riddick,” Xander groaned, tugging at his hand, ignoring the way his bones were grinding together in his hand, the way Riddick was squeezing painfully hard. “Get up. Seriously. _Get up_. This one knee thing is freaking me the fuck out. You’re the toughest person I _know_ , don’t bow to an idiot!”

He stood, teeth bared. Xander knew that Riddick was not the kind of man to bow. He _knew_ he hated doing it. Why the hell _did_ he?

“Seriously?” he keened, swallowing. “Why are you _doing_ this?”

The man dropped his hand, stepping back from him, scowling as he turned to stoop and scoop up the weapons, tucking them away on his belt, frowning. 

Xander slowly sat on the bench that went around the edge of the cargo hold, sighing. “Look... I get it. It pisses you off. I don’t think you get it either. Neither of us get it. I mean, unless there’s something going on that you you know something about, but I don’t know what’s going on. I really don’t. And honestly, I’m as pissed off about this as you are, okay? But giving me the silent treatment isn’t going to help.”

Riddick flicked one of the knives back out of his belt, and Xander lifted his chin. If the convict was going to stab him, he was going to stab a man who was going to go down fighting.

Instead, he flicked the handle out towards him, waiting for Xander to take it. 

He did, slowly, wrapping his fingers around the handle, and taking it, quietly. Was it another weapon to defend himself with? Was that the idea? 

“Keep that,” Riddick ordered, firmly. “Don’t let Johns take it.”

He hesitated, then nodded.

Riddick nodded, briefly, then headed for the cabin, leaving it up to Xander if he wanted to follow him or not. He did, of course, following him quickly, biting his lip. The taller man led the way past the chair that Johns had been in. He wasn’t there anymore, and Xander really had no idea where he’d gone, but he didn’t argue when Riddick led the way to the pair of chairs set off to the side, navigator and weaponry chairs. He tapped the back of one of the chairs, then settled in the other, himself. The order was obvious, and Xander flopped down in the other. 

“So I guess this means you’re not pissed at me?” He asked, squirming back in the seat, trying to get as comfortable as he could.

“I’m watching you,” he smirked slightly.

“Ah... so you’re not keeping me close because you’re being my friend, you’re keeping me close because you want to make sure I’m not going to do something evil and nasty. I understand perfectly now. I get it.” Xander smirked, and played with the controls of the chair, delighted when it leaned back and he was able to lean with it, sighing softly, pleased. “Mmm. Much better. So does that mean you’re going to keep saving me, just so you can keep an eye on me?”

Riddick smirked, leaning back slightly himself.

Xander squirmed in his seat so that he was laying on his side, hands pillowed under his head as he considered Riddick for a few moments. “I could sing you to sleep.”

He snorted.

“I really could. I mean, I don’t sing _well_ , and I’m pretty sure I don’t know a single lullaby or anything, but I could totally bust out some REO Speedwagon or Patti Loveless or _something_. But I’m pretty sure that’s one of those ‘don’t wake up’ things.”

He smirked, and reached across the space, pressing his fingertips firmly against Xander’s mouth for a moment, then settled back in his own seat, crossing his arms. 

“Brat,” he murmured, smirking as he closed his eyes, sighing softly as he finally dropped into a sleep he’d been forcing off for a couple days now. He was stressed and sore, and torture, if nothing else, had taken a hell of a lot out of him. It was with a deep sense of relief that he let sleep wash over him, dropping him into a deep sleep, too deep to even dream in.

Riddick watched him for a very long time, his silver eyes focused intently on Xander’s sleep relaxed face.

He did glance up though, finally, those eyes focused firmly on the other man watching the boy sleep. Johns was standing in the shadows, like he was trying to copy the man himself, arms crossed as he leaned on the wall, eyes on the curve of Xander’s spine. He didn’t seem to realize that Riddick had seen him. 

Riddick growled. 

  
 

\---

  
 

The ship that Johns had found and stolen for them off the Dark Athena was serviceable, fairly solid, and strong. But it had several small problems, and one of them was the complete lack of supplies. It was likely that it had never been meant for long trips, but rather for short skips out to whatever planet they were raiding. There wasn’t enough fuel to keep going much longer, and food was going to be a real issue. If they’d had cryo, they could have at least gone to sleep, but the ship just wasn’t outfitted for it.

Johns had picked the planet they’d landed on, apparently, because it was small and unobtrusive, and because there weren’t likely to be enough people there who would recognize Riddick or have the skills to catch him and take him as their own bounty. 

Xander liked this world.

He wore a fairly heavy jacket, which had long sleeves that fell over his hands, and a massive hood pulled over his head. The continent they were on was in a constant state of twilight, because the sun stayed mostly around the equator of the world. It was too hot for any life around the centre of the world, too cold at the tops and bottom, but around the part of the planet they were on, plants flourished and life celebrated. Xander also figured Riddick probably liked it. 

Humming softly, he stepped off a high side walk, heading down the cobble stone street, quietly. There were few vehicles here, and instead the main transportation were carriages pulled by massive six legged beasts that sort of looked like horses. He’d had to avoid a few already, but it was kind of like walking around in his very own sci fi.

Peering out at the people he passed from under the hood, Xander felt sort of like a secret agent or some kind of spy or something. Someone with a secret.

But really, he realized, he sort of _was_ a man with a secret.

And when Johns had been working on some paperwork, Xander had sort of snooped, and now he knew exactly how valuable of a secret that _was_. Riddick was worth a fairly large fortune, just in bounty alone, and Johns had pointed out that taking him to separate prisons themselves instead of just straight to the Merc Guild could actually net someone even more. If Xander found a merc and betrayed Riddick to them, he could potentially net a very large cut.

But he’d never do that.

He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Riddick had somehow wormed his way into Xander’s very short list of those he was loyal to. He’d be loyal to the man, even if it meant his own death. Simple.

Ducking into the small inn Johns had decided they should stay at - Xander didn’t know why, when the spaceship seemed perfectly safe, but he supposed it was something like a sailor just wanting to spend a night on solid ground, and off of the sea - and headed down the wooden steps to the tavern.

It was warm, here. There was a fire roaring in a large fireplace, and the low, beamed ceiling held the heat in. Xander had pointed out that it looked like something like Lord of the Rings or D&D, but the joke had sort of fallen flat. Heathens didn’t even know about Dungeons and Dragons. Shocking. He slipped around a few tables of fellow travellers trying to consume some real food, and headed to the back corner. Johns was wearing a coat like Xander’s, hiding within its folds. He did look up when he saw him coming, however, and grinned. “Any luck?”

Xander set the brown cloth bag on the table, then slid a few UDs back at him. “Your change.”

Johns pushed the bag open, and groaned softly when he tugged out a glass vial. “Good work, Xander.”

“That stuff’ll kill you, you know,” Xander remarked idly, tugging Johns up over to himself, and sniffing at it curiously. His nose crinkled, and he set it back down. “Where’s Riddick? You actually let him out of your sights?”

“He’s upstairs. I thought he’d be out of the way there.”

“Meaning you chained him to that bed frame or something, right?” Xander rolled his eyes, snatching a piece of meat off of Johns plate and chewing thoughtfully on it. “Or in the closet.”

Johns smirked at him. 

“In the closet,” he rolled his eyes. “We got more than one room up in that suite thing though, Johns. Whose room’d you lock him in?”

“You think I’m gonna let my bounty away from me at night?” He arched a brow.

“I dunno, I kinda assumed you wouldn’t want him to disturb your beauty sleep,” Xander grinned, wolfishly, and stole a hunk of a vegetable a lot like a potato off of Johns’ plate. 

“You know we could just get you food of your own,” the bounty hunter leaned forward over the table.

“Does it taste as good as stolen food?” He grinned cheekily.

“Maybe not quite, but I hear it’s comparable,” he smirked, and stood. “You want anything in particular?”

Xander blinked up at him. “You’re getting it for me?”

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” he smirked, and clapped Xander’s shoulder. “So?”

“Uh... more of that meat?” He shrugged.

Johns nodded, and headed towards the bar. Feeling a little flustered by the change in routine - not that their routine ever really _was_ routine - Xander shifted a bit and rolled the little bottles around inside the bag, idly.

Honestly, he wished Riddick was down here. It wasn’t just because silence with him was comfortable, rather than awkward, it was just that he couldn’t quite figure Johns out. He was nice to him, which was a little odd considering Xander had really been nothing but a giant monkey wrench in everything Johns had done since he’d arrived. But he seemed willing to take care of him, to get him food and medical care. He really didn’t understand it. In Xander’s experience, most people he’d met that were just _too_ nice all wanted something in the end.

So what was it that Johns wanted?

The mercenary stepped back to the table, then, setting a plate and a cup in front of Xander. “There we go. Eat up and stop stealing my shit.”

“This isn’t the same stuff you’re drinking, is it?” He picked up the glass, sniffing at it. It smelled like fruit and the sharp bite of alcohol. “Wine?”

Johns nodded, sliding back into his own seat.

“You do know I’m not very, ah... old, right?” Xander cleared his throat, awkwardly.

The man arched a brow. “You’re a man, ain’tcha?”

Slightly flushed, Xander nodded quickly. “Well, obviously. I mean, of course I am. Do I look like some kid or something? Of course I’m a man.” He took too big of a gulp of the wine, and gagged, but quickly swallowed it down, trying to prove his manliness.

Johns snickered, grinning.

Smiling weakly, Xander sipped at the sharp drink at a more sedate pace, trying to convince his face not to pull into awkward expressions of displeasure.

“So. You been travelling with us for quite a piece, Xander,” Johns considered him. “Anybody looking for you?”

Xander hesitated, taking a ravenous bite of a hunk of the meat Johns had brought him. “Well, probably. Yeah, I think they probably would be looking for me, but I dunno how they’re supposed to find me. I mean, I’m kinda far away from home. I think.”

“Where’s home?” He frowned.

“Uh... Sunnydale. California.” When Johns’ expression was still blank in non-comprehension, he added, “Earth?”

He whistled. “Damn, Xander.”

“Uh... is that bad?”

“You are a _long_ way from home.” He snorted. “Earth is one of the early colonies. That whole region of space has been abandoned, mined for everything it had left and dropped. I didn’t even know people still _lived_ out there. Thought Earth was a dead planet.”

Xander leaned forward. “Well, I might have gone through _time_ , too... I mean, I just _appeared_ right?”

“Maybe,” Johns considered that, then dug in his pocket. “I can’t even remember what U.Y. it is...”

“You - Why?” Xander repeated.

“U.Y. Universal Year.” He frowned, tugging a small black square out of one of his pockets. “Every planet’s cycle is different, right, so they keep a universal date... I think Earth was one of the world’s the cycles were similar to. But I can check the date... how many cycles is your year?” He glanced up at Xander.

“...huh?”

He rolled his eyes. “Standard day is 25 hours. Standard month is 50 days. Standard year is 10 months. What is Earth’s ratio, so I can figure out what the U.Y. is in Earth years?”

“Oh!” Xander perked up. “Uh... 24 hours, 30 or 31 days, 12 months.”

Johns frowned, punching that in. “Right, well, dunno why some of your months are different, but I used 30... should be, ah, 1997? Well, maybe 1998, depending on how those 31 day months affect the count, but...”

Xander gaped at him. “1997.”

“Yeah.” Johns glanced up at him. “What? You travelled in time, too? Shit.”

“No.” Xander cleared his throat. “I _didn’t_.”

“Oh. Well, that’s good, I guess.” He shoved the little timepiece back in his pocket. “Means we could probably arrange to get you home, but... well, less you got your hands on some major tech...”

“It takes a long time to get through space,” Xander finished his thought.

Johns snorted. “Yeah.”

Xander hesitated. “Well, if you took the ship we have...”

“You’d never get there.” He said, firmly. “There’s no cryo, so you’d have to be awake the whole time. You’d never be able to put enough food or fuel in that ship to get there.”

“Okay, okay,” he held up his hands. “But if you _could_. Just pretend. How long?”

“For our ship?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty good, right? It’s a pretty good ship. How long would it take our ship to get to Earth, supposing you _could_ fuel it and everything.”

Johns frowned. “A generous guess... ten years?”

Xander gaped at him.

“I mean, less you could catch one of those sub-light deals, but those are just rumours, really. That’d shave years off, but good luck getting your hands on that stuff. I don’t even know if it’s really real.”

He keened, slumping back in his chair. “So unless I wanna be practically middle-aged by the time I get there...”

“You could try to send a comm... you got the tech to read that shit?”

“Honest opinion? If we do, the government’s got it, and no one I know would ever see it.”

“Well, you could always try,” he shrugged. “You done eating?”

Xander wasn’t really sure. He felt sort of sick, actually, his stomach churning, clenching and twisting. He was a decade away from home. If he left right now, right this moment, he’d be almost thirty by the time he got there. Hell, G-man might have died of old age by the time he got home. Well, probably not. He wasn’t _that_ old. But he for sure wasn’t graduating high school, now. “Yeah... but can I - can I get more of the wine?”

Johns clapped him on the shoulder, and stood. “Absolutely, Xander. My treat.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Something was wrong.

Riddick couldn’t quite put his finger on what exactly it was that was wrong, but he had long ago learned to trust his instincts when they told him something, so he listened, focusing on the silence around him.

Sifting through the sounds of the building itself, the bubbling of the pluming and the buzz of electrical lines, he sought beyond them. Parting the noise of the bar below like running his hand through water, he searched deeper, and found a pair of heart beats, fast and hard and pounding, but one skipped like a distress signal, calling his name.

Riddick’s fists tightened, and he briefly tested the sensitivity of the cuffs.

Johns had a sick sense of humour, using these. The more the person in them struggled, the tighter they got. He used to see Slam guards put a cuff on one man each, then place bets on which would pull harder first and go far enough to cut their hand off. The key here wasn’t to pull your hands free, not really, but to bust the chain between them, that controlled the tightening. In this case, the chain was looped over the metal bar clothes were meant to be hung on. 

Gripping the chains themselves, he wrapped them tightly around each other, then jerked down on them, hard, snapping the chain in several places. Baring his teeth, he stormed out of the closet and towards the sound of the heartbeat with the syncopated rhythm. 

It sounded wrong. Even from this distance, he could tell that something was wrong with the normally familiar heartbeat, that it was faster than it usually was, which was strange considering how fast that heartbeat normally was anyways. It was harder, and sharper, like something about it was wrong. It was panicked, which was a strange thing. The last time he’d heard _this_ heartbeat sounding like this, he’d been dosed with Johns’ meds. Fuck, if Johns had dosed him again...

Riddick slammed the door to Xander’s bedroom open, and snarled at what he saw.

Xander couldn’t really remember much after that second glass of wine, not really. He’d finished his first, then took the second that Johns had given him with a shit-eating grin, and sipped at it. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure he’d gotten halfway through that second glass. He’d started drinking, and everything had seemed fine at first, but then he had very swiftly started feeling strange. His whole body felt slightly weak and wobbly. He was dizzy and slightly nauseated, and the more he sipped at his wine, the heavier his eyes and body felt, until finally he said something about needing to go to bed.

He had no idea how he _got_ to his bed. Really had no idea. 

Just one moment, he remembered being at the table, sipping at that wine, then the next, he was lying on his bed. Naked. When the fuck had he taken his clothes off?

Xander struggled to sit up, but his arms weren’t quite co-operating. His limbs felt like they were made of lead, and his tongue felt like it was too full for his mouth, like he couldn’t quite contain it. He fought to sit up, but there was cold metal around his wrists, seeming to hold him in place, and he struggled to get them free. “What... what’s going on?” he slurred, voice strange and stilted.

There was movement at the edge of the bed, and Johns crawled onto the bed. The other man wasn’t wearing a shirt, and looked sort of devious. “Hey, Xander.”

“Johns.” he blinked at him, trying to force his eyes to focus. “What - what are you doing here? What’s going on? Why am I _cuffed_?”

“Figured it was safer,” he smirked, and pushed Xander back down onto the bed. 

Every _Danger Will Robinson!_ instinct that Xander had went on high alert, and his heart started slamming harder in his chest, leaping up towards his throat. This was wrong. Very wrong. He knew that. He could sense it as much as he could sense anything else. This was what Johns wanted. 

“ _No_ ,” he squirmed back, fighting through the haze of whatever it was that was making him feel all fuzzy and strange. He didn’t think a glass and a half of wine would do this to a person, but whatever it was, he flatly refused to take this. It wasn’t happening. “No. Johns... _no_.”

“Too late for that,” he smirked, swinging his leg over Xander’s hip, straddling him. 

“ _No_!” Xander bucked and struggled against him, not caring that he was naked and that this probably just made it worse to an extent. He needed this man off of him, as far away from him as possible. He had to get him away. _Now_. “Fuck, get the hell off of me!”

“Stop fighting, Xander,” Johns told him, with a stern sort of seriousness. “It’ll make it easier.”

“ _Not a fucking chance_!” he howled, and slammed his knees up, striking the bounty hunter in the lower back with his knees. When the other fell forward, he slammed his forehead against Johns’. When the other howled in surprise and pain, Xander rolled them both to the side, hard as he could, throwing the other off of the bed and straight onto the floor. 

Scrambling across the bed, Xander dove to snatch his knife, the one Riddick had given him, from under his pillow. Rolling onto his back again, he flicked it towards Johns, wrists still together, teeth bared in a vicious snarl. “Come near me again and I stick you like a fucking pig.”

“Don’t be stupid, Xander,” He smirked slightly. “That won’t help you. Come on... calm down.”

“I will not fucking _calm down_!” Xander was struggling though. Adrenaline was keeping him upright, but it wouldn’t do that for long. He could feel it, whatever it was that was in his system, making him weak and tired. He was fairly sure that Johns had dosed him. He was struggling to stay even upright because the bastard had _dosed_ the fucking _wine_. Panting, he stumbled slightly, then nearly fell when Johns abruptly leapt up onto the bed, grabbing his wrists and forcing the knife up.

“Fucker!” Xander howled, struggling again, and finally managed to catch the other’s arm with the blade itself, satisfied that he managed to make him bleed.

Johns wrenched the knife from Xander’s fingers, and threw it aside across the floor. “There. We don’t need that anymore. Do we?”

Snarling, he did something he never really thought he’d do, and sank his teeth into John’s upper, bare arm, tearing through the skin and ripping at him, just trying to cause the other as much pain and inconvenience as possible in the hopes that Johns would fucking let _go_ of him.

He didn’t, though, he roared in anger and rage, and wrapped his fingers in Xander’s hair, ripping his head away from him.

Mouth a bloody mess, Xander struggled to get free of him, straining. He struggled free of the other’s grip, and scrambled off the bed. Darting up to his feet, he ran for the knife again, diving to scoop it up again, but before he could turn around and try to stab the other, Johns tackled him around the middle. He howled when the bounty hunter put a heavy hand on his head, pushing him down into the dirty carpet, pinning him down as he tried to force Xander to be still. “ _Get - the - fuck - off - of - me_!”

Johns pressed his head down harder, his own teeth bared as he growled, “Oh I’ll get the fuck off on you all right...”

“Get off of me!” Xander roared, arching back into him, harder, trying to force him off of him again. 

And that was when Riddick slammed the door open.

Things were happening fast. Too fast, really, to detail exactly how they did. One moment, Xander was trapped under a dose fuelled, sexually frustrated Johns, and the next he was scrambling to his feet as the bounty hunter howled in agony, collapsed on the floor. There was blood, everywhere, spreading out in a large puddle, some getting on Xander’s feet as he backed away from him.

Riddick sneered, and threw the handle of the knife aside. The handle was all that was left. Just to the left of Johns’ spinal cord, close to the sweet spot he had pointed out to Xander but not _quite_ there, Riddick had sunk Xander’s knife into he other man’s back, then broke it off, still deep inside him. 

It wasn’t in the right place to kill Johns fast.

It was in the right place to make him suffer.

Still cuffed, Xander stood, still fighting off the dose he’d been slipped, and barely seemed to register the order to get ready to go when Riddick gave it. He didn’t argue, though, when the larger man simply threw the hooded coat he’d been wearing earlier around his shoulders, and leaned into Riddick’s side, slightly. “Wait,” he said, drawing the convict short. 

Riddick glanced at him, scowling heavily. “We need to go. Now.”

“I know.” He nodded, and turned around, drawing a bare foot back and kicking Johns in the chest, as hard as he could. The bounty hunter howled, curling in on himself, and Xander panted through bloody lips, heading back to the taller man. “I’m ready to go.”

He nodded, and smirked once at the mercenary’s bloody back before he tugged the teenager out of the little inn and towards the docks.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Breakfast is on,” Xander smiled kind of sheepishly, setting a plastic plate on the control panel in front of Riddick’s chair. It wasn’t much of a meal, not really, with a protein bar, and some kind of vitamin rich porridge that looked a little like snot. “We’re all out of the real food. So it’s emergency rations until we find a planet to get supplies on.”

Riddick grunted, picking up the plate and waved at the screen.

Xander leaned closer, curiously, considering the screen. “Apollo Three. That’s our next stop?”

He didn’t answer, but really, it had been a pretty stupid question to begin with. Obviously that was their next destination, or he wouldn’t have bothered to point it out.

“Cool,” Xander shrugged, flopping in the co-pilot’s seat with his own “food”. 

They still looked a little odd, the pair of them travelling. Riddick still had the cuffs that Johns had locked him into around his wrists, though the chains themselves were now long gone. Xander was still naked except for his jacket, which was fortunately large enough to cover most of him, but his bare feet and bare ankles looked a little odd sticking out of the bottom. They’d sort of left in a hurry, what with the stabbing Johns and leaving him for dead, and Xander hadn’t exactly had time to worry about such trivial things as _clothes_. Sure, he wished he had some now, but there were worst fates.

“So, anything exciting on Apollo Three? Or will this just be a stop and gas and go sort of thing? Because, I mean, I can’t blame you if it’s just a fast pit stop sort of thing, but if we’re gonna stay at all, I want to make sure you’re not gonna get snatched up by bounty hungry mercs or something, you know?”

“Thought I’d leave you there.”

Xander stopped dead, spoon of the warm vitamin slop halfway to his mouth. “...what?”

Riddick arched a brow, simply. 

“No way,” Xander said fervently, rapidly, throwing up his hands. “You _can’t_ leave me there! You can’t! I know I’m annoying and I talk too much, but Riddick, dammit, you’re the only person I _know_! I’d die alone!”

“If you did, maybe that’s best,” he said calmly, eating a spoonful of his own vitamin mix.

“Okay, maybe I wouldn’t _die_ , I mean, I’m okay at taking care of myself, I mean, most of the...” Xander trailed off. “Riddick, honest truth is that I have no idea how to survive alone. None. I have always had a slayer or a witch or a librarian to keep me on my toes, to keep me out of the big battles. I mean, I know I’m not completely skill-less, either. I mean, I can help, but...”

“But you need help.”

Xander keened softly, sliding down in his seat, looking down at his bare toes. “Yeah. But I need the help to begin with.”

The other man frowned, then tapped Xander’s plate. “I won’t feel sorry for you. Eat.”

He looked up, quickly, flushed. “I never wanted you to.”

“Then stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Riddick rumbled, and stood. “Eat. When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, come find me.”

Xander glowered at his back, feeling sort of like he should have his hackles up and be defending his honour. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, he was just trying to explain what his situation was like, he was trying to tell him that he needed help, he wasn’t feeling sorry for himself just because he was a completely untrained loser who wasn’t able to protect himself from anything and was just a bumbling idiot who fell over his own stupid feet and had no redeeming qualities and was so pathetic that if Riddick hadn’t saved him he really would have been raped, and - holy fuck, he really was feeling sorry for himself.

He scrambled to shove the last of his mostly tasteless rations down, then darted back into the very tight “living quarters” the ship had. Riddick wasn’t there.

He was about to start calling when he remembered that he’d said to ‘come find him’. 

If it was hide and seek he wanted, hide and seek he’d get.

It took pretty much no time at all to figure out that Riddick wasn’t in the living quarters themselves. There really wasn’t space to hide anywhere, things were packed so tightly into as little space as possible. He checked the ceilings even, just to make sure, but the smooth ceiling was solid. He already knew he wasn’t in the cabin, which left the very tiny “bathroom” and the cargo hold. Glancing into the closet sized bathroom found no one there, so he headed into the cargo bay, but that was empty, too.

He blinked, confused. They were in _space_. Where the hell had he gone?

Xander sat on the edge of the bench in the bay, frowning slightly as he considered the hollow space. Well, how had Riddick always found him? Because he heard him whimpering, that was how. And because he could see in the dark. He couldn’t do either of those things. But Xander had a pretty good sense of hearing...

He closed his eyes, and tried to just listen.

All he could hear at first was the hum and buzz of the ship itself, the engines working, the computer working to keep the navigation going smoothly. But he didn’t want to hear the ship, so he closed his eyes tighter, and tried to ignore those sounds.

He figured he’d hear breathing, maybe, or movement.

Xander didn’t expect to hear a strong fast heartbeat. It was just on the edge of his hearing at first, but the moment he focused on it, he could hear it louder and louder, absolutely pounding into his senses. And as he listened, it got even louder, but he knew now it was because it was getting closer. 

Xander spun, and threw his arm up, blocking Riddick’s arm with his own. The curved blade halted just inches from his forehead, and panting, Xander met the other man’s eyes. “Found you.”

Riddick stepped back, lowering the weapon. “You did.”

“I _heard_ you.” Xander scratched his jaw, considering that. “Like, I completely heard your heartbeat. Is that a complete freak thing?”

“No.” Riddick flipped the curved blade towards him again, and waited until Xander took it from his hand. “That is how I found you. This is an ulak.”

“Ulak.” Xander repeated.

“Monks created them, used them to dispense justice.” Riddick grinned wolfishly. “You will use it to teach anyone who doubts you that you are not to be played with. You will never let anyone use you again.”

“Right. The end of feeling sorry for myself.” Xander flushed. 

Riddick smirked, and stepped back, holding his hands out. “Attack me.”

He hesitated. “You’re sure?”

“I said to attack me.”

Xander cleared his throat, and threw himself at the other man, ulak flashing.

Riddick side-stepped, and almost casually knocked Xander to the floor.

He grunted, and pushed himself up. Shoving the sleeves of his coat further up his arms, Xander threw himself forward again. He ducked under the other’s arm this time, but still got kicked away a few feet. He wasn’t willing to say die, though, and threw himself at Riddick again.

It wasn’t a fight, not really.

It was more of a massacre.

Xander had the enthusiasm needed to fight Riddick, and he had the advantage most didn’t in that he wasn’t scared of the convict. He just flatly refused to back down.

But he just didn’t have the actual skills he needed, and he broadcasted every one of his movements long before he ever took it. And Riddick didn’t pull a single punch, either. Every time he hit the other aside, Xander would slam into the floor or the wall or the benches at full force. It wasn’t until there was a sharp snap of broken bone that Riddick stepped back, waiting for Xander to push himself back to his feet.

“What are you stopping for?” Xander growled through grit teeth, forcing himself up. “If I was in one of the slams, no one would stop just because I broke something. Come on. You said you were teaching me to survive without you. If you stop now, I’ll never stop feeling sorry for myself.”

He nodded, and swung again.

Xander ducked his arm, his other arm, his leg, his elbows. Favouring his left leg only slightly, he slashed at the larger man, the tip of the blade just catching the point of Riddick’s jaw before the heel of the other’s hand slammed into his temple, and Xander sagged to the floor, looking slightly dazed. He tried to push himself up again, but Riddick crouched in front of him, holding him down to the floor. 

“Enough.”

“Those guards wouldn’t have said ‘enough’,” he protested, eyes not quite focusing on Riddick. “The drones wouldn’t have...”

“You have to learn to harness the anger, kid. Don’t let it consume you.”

“Stop fucking calling me kid,” he sighed, and fell back onto his ass. Panting, Xander straightened his left leg out, and ran his fingers down his calf, trying to find where it had broken. “This really really hurts, you know.”

“I know,” he said simply, and gripped Xander’s bare foot, tugging it forward, waiting patiently as the teenager shoved his bones back into place with trembling fingers.

“Sometimes I just think you’re a sadist,” Xander groaned, leaning back. “And then you go and fix my bones again.”

“There is no rule that sadists can’t fix what they deal,” Riddick offered, smirking slightly as he took Xander’s hand, hauling him to his feet, and letting the teenager swung his arm over his shoulder so that he could limp alongside him.

“So... still helping me cause you can’t help it, or cause I’ve actually earned a little bit of respect?” Xander asked, laughing softly.

Riddick didn’t answer, just smirked as he all but carried Xander to the only bed.

  
 

\---

  
 

A week was more than enough time for Xander to get absolutely, completely sick of protein bars and vitamin slop, whatever it was actually supposed to be called.

It was also enough, apparently, for a broken leg to heal.

Xander wasn’t sure that was normal.

He _so_ was half demon.

Dammit.

He limped a little, sometimes, mostly just when he was trying to move too fast or when trying to head up stairs, but his leg was good enough that he’d headed out into town in the planet they’d landed on to find clothes and food while Riddick arranged for the ship to be refuelled. Next time, Xander would probably take care of that part of the operation, too, to make sure Riddick wasn’t seen by anyone, but until he knew what he was doing and got a hold of some _clothes_ , Riddick had to take care of the refuelling.

Xander wished he didn’t have to leave Riddick behind where he could get seen.

And he’d wish that even harder in a few minutes.

He stepped out of the small market, slinging a heavy bag of a potato like vegetable over his shoulder, and hefted another bag carefully. He wore a loose knitted sweater over a white tank top - and didn’t that white tank top make him feel like some kind of douche bag - and a pair of tight black pants. They looked like they wouldn’t fit on the rack, but wearing them he felt like at least they’d give less for someone to grab onto, if he got in a fight with someone. The boots he really liked, though. They were almost knee high and had thick, ass kicking soles. He almost couldn’t wait until a merc tried to cause trouble again and he’d get to bust their faces in with one of these suckers.

Except that most mercs don’t like getting close enough for face kicking. Most don’t need to fight Riddick, after all.

“Kid,” a man jogged up to him, grinning easily, casually. “Hey, wait up, kid.”

“Ain’t a kid,” Xander adjusted the bag over his shoulder, but waited for the stranger to catch up to him. “Can I help you?”

“You were on the ship that came in today, right?”

Xander blinked at him. “I’m... gonna guess you don’t get much traffic in these parts, huh? Kind of a little town, not a heck of a lot goes on here?”

The guy grinned. “Yep. So you were on it, huh?”

“Uh... yeah.” He shifted the bag again.

“You taking passengers on board?” He asked, trying to look casual and not entirely succeeding. “I mean, like you said, small port, not too many ships come through...”

“Sorry,” Xander shook his head. “We’re not taking passengers.”

“Oh.” He frowned, and fell in step beside Xander when he started walking again. The bags were really too heavy to just stand there and hold them, especially since the longer he stood there, the more his leg hurt. “Are you sure? I mean, I’m willing to pay...”

“Sorry,” Xander shrugged as he stepped up the steps into the small town port.

There were a couple men loading boxes into the storage bay of the ship, and Xander was relieved he’d thought to give the merchant the codes to get into the hold so that supplies could be dropped off without Riddick having to come out and risk being seen. Plus now that he had the too-eager wannabe passenger following him, he wanted to get off this world as fast as possible. He’d be happy to leave Apollo Three in their proverbial rear view. Heading up into the gangplank, Xander dropped the bags beside a pile of supply boxes and mentally swore at the fact that the stranger had followed him in.

“The UDs I owe you, right?” Xander dug in his jacket pocket, tugging out several bars and handing them over.

“Thanks,” one of the guys said, not even looking at them as he shoved them in his own pocket.

“You sure you ain’t taking passengers?” The stranger interrupted.

Xander sighed heavily, and turned to face him. “Look, I’m sure you’re a nice guy and all, and I’m sure you’d be a perfectly fine passenger. I even get the whole desire to get out of Dodge thing, I do.” Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong. “But I’m not taking passengers. You’ll have to go.”

“Shame,” the stranger said.

_Danger, Will Robinson_!

“I was really hoping I’d get to meet your travelling companion.”

Xander ducked before the guy behind him had a chance to actually connect, slamming his foot back into his gut, sending him back into the boxes with a crash. His buddy tried to tackle him, but he darted up and over him, rolling out of the way.

“Not nice, kid,” the stranger pulled a fairly sizable handgun from within his jacket.

“I really fucking wish,” Xander said, grabbing the guy’s arm and shoving it up, knocking the gun out of his hands. “That people would stop fucking calling me _kid_!”

“No can do,” the man who had first tried to strike him answered, pressing another gun into the back of Xander’s neck. “Kid.”

“Fuck,” he sighed.

The stranger scooped his gun back up and jabbed Xander in the stomach with it. “Now, you’re gonna take us into the cabin, kid, to meet your buddy.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about,” he said cheerfully, palms spread wide.

He jabbed him harder with the gun. “Last chance, kid.”

“Really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Xander said, trying to sound disarming. “I don’t have any friends here on the ship with me.”

He sneered. “Then take us to your bounty.”

He blinked at him, as though surprised, and pressed his palm into his chest, innocently. “Bounty? I don’t have a bounty. I’ve never been accused of being a merc ever before... I sort of feel flattered.”

“I’m going to blow you apart,” he snarled.

“Oi. I just bought this sweater. Try not to get a hole in it, okay?”

“I’ll put a hole in your fucking _head_ ,” he snarled, slamming the gun into Xander’s forehead, then cried out when someone caught the back of his neck and jerked him back. His cry was cut off short, however, when Riddick snapped his head too far around, and he dropped dead to the floor, neck broken.

The moment the gun was gone from his forehead, Xander ducked and slammed his shoulder into the gut of the other man with the gun, slamming him back hard enough that the man’s head cracked against one of the benches, and he went limp. Riddick took care of the third man as well, then glanced over at Xander when he grabbed the feet of one of them, dragging him out of the ship, tossing him almost casually out into the courtyard. Xander rolled his eyes, but grabbed a hold of one of the other men’s feet, dragging him out as well, dropping him on top of the previous body, not nearly as easily as Riddick had managed it. The third man followed a few moments later, then Xander limped up into the ship again. “Can we leave this planet and never ever come back?”

“Am I going to be saving you on every planet?” Riddick asked, smirking slightly, but headed into the ship, leading the way.

“Oh ha ha, very funny.” he rolled his eyes, hitting the door closing button as he followed Riddick into the cabin. “What happened to not coming out unless you had to?”

“I had to,” he said calmly, and threw himself in the pilot’s seat, cuing the engines to start.

As the ship began to rumble to life below them, Xander rolled his eyes. “You didn’t _have_ to, you chose to. Have we not gone over this before, you don’t _have_ to do things for me? I mean, I’m not going to argue if you keep saving me, I kind of like when you keep me from being completely dead, but it’s _not_ necessary. I would have found _some_ way to keep myself alive. I think. I mean, probably.”

Riddick glanced at him. “I had to.”

He sighed, leaning forward to rest his crossed arms on the edge of the control panel, resting his cheek on his crossed forearms. “I don’t get it. Why would you _have_ to come save me? It’s not like you owe me some kind of debt, or something.”

He punched several more buttons, then nodded over at Xander, silently advising him to sit back into his seat again before they took off.

Xander sighed softly, and did as he had silently been ordered. “It’s not because I do that little whimpering thing, is it? Because I’ve been trying to stop doing that. It’s not like you’re _actually_ an animal who has to come get me, or something. There shouldn’t be any instinctual thing that makes you want to do that, really, there isn’t. I mean, unless you’re one of whatever I am, too.”

He glanced at him, frowning slightly. 

The ship lurched, then took off into the sky, pressing both of them back into their seats as it pushed through the air, trying to get enough thrust to get off of the land. Xander panted slightly - every time they took off, his stomach lurched hard and fast and made him want to throw up everything in it - and he hated that moment of taking off. Being in space didn’t bother him in the slightest, but getting off of the ground horrified him. Once they pushed through the atmosphere, though, he relaxed back into his seat properly, and considered Riddick, thoughtfully. “Okay, you’re giving me that serious look. I don’t think I’m human, really. See, my mom... my mom died when I was born, no one knows who she was. But in Sunnydale, where I’m from, it’s a mouth to hell. Like, a gate, sort of, it’s where the barrier between earth and hell is too thin, and you can just sort of slip between the two. So there are lots of demons and monsters and creatures. And one of my friends is the slayer, which is, well, the one whose supposed to police that mouth, I guess. Kill the monsters coming through. She said maybe my mom wasn’t human.”

“You look human.”

“Oh, sure, I know that. Feel pretty human, too, but I don’t really know what a human feels like, do I? I just feel like me, and I’ve always felt like this. But it is true that I sort of attract demons to me, not like other people do. Vampires hate me. _Hate_ me. But other kinds of demons all want to be around me, or with me. It’s kind of weird.”

“What the hell is a _vampire_?”

Xander’s jaw dropped.

Riddick met his eyes, but just arched a brow, waiting for an answer. 

“Uh. A vampire. Shit. I’ve never had someone actually ask that before... I mean... everyone knows what a vampire is.”

He waited, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Uh. Vampires. They’re a creature, they look human, but they aren’t quite human. As I understand it, vampires are people that used to be human, but are possessed by a demon that controls their dead bodies. They drink blood - human blood, if they can get it, but I hear of some that drink animal blood. Anyways, they drink human blood, and can turn other humans into vampires by draining all of their blood from them, then feeding that person their blood. Um, they’re kinda an unholy thing... they can’t even enter your home unless they’re invited in.”

“I’ve met some things that like to drink blood,” Riddick smirked slightly. “But nothing like that.”

“Yeah... maybe they’re kind of an Earth thing. You don’t have any... you know... undead people?”

Riddick considered that, shaking his head slightly. “No.”

“Hm. Well, that could be a good thing...” he considered that, scratching at his jaw. “I mean, personally, I’m okay with being in a universe where I don’t have to run into vampires. If I never have to meet anyone like Deadboy again in my life, I’m set.”

“Deadboy?” he smirked.

“Deadboy.” He sneered, leaning back in his chair. “His name was Angel. And he was a _bastard_. He _hated_ me and I don’t even know why. I never did anything to him to make him hate me, he just hated me right from the start. I mean, I didn’t like him cause he was dating Buffy.”

“Buffy.” The man shifted in his seat, turning so that he was facing Xander more.

“Yeah... um. She’s one of my best friends.” Xander hesitated. “Was, I guess. I’m not likely to be going home to see them anytime soon..I’m about ten years from seeing her ever again. But she’s the Slayer I was talking about. One girl born in every generation to kill the vampires, or something like that. I can never remember how G-man phrases it. She’s kind of like the girl version of you.”

He snorted.

“No, really. She’s about this tall,” he held his hands up to show how tall - or not - she was. “And just really kind of tiny. Very blond. She looks like just one of the most innocent looking people you’d ever think to see, but... she can kick anybody’s ass. Well, not your ass. You would totally hand her her ass. But she’s still pretty impressive.”

Riddick smirked slightly, shaking his head. “Heh.”

“I’d love to introduce you to her,” Xander grinned, squirming in his seat, smiling slightly at Riddick. “There’s just one problem, if you ask me.”

He arched a brow, curious.

“She’d totally think you were hot,” he laughed softly. “She’d totally have a huge crush on you.”

The convict just snorted, shaking his head. He didn’t look terribly impressed.

Snickering, Xander slid out of his seat, and headed back into the storage bay. Digging through one of the boxes, he tugged out a small handful of a purple skinned fruit that reminded him of plums, though he didn’t know what it actually tasted like, and headed back to the cabin. Setting a few of the small fruits on the other man’s lap, Xander dropped back into his seat, and bit into one of them. He considered it, thoughtfully, chewing on the sweet, soft fruit. It didn’t taste like a plum at all, and really more like an apple, but soft. Strange.

“So how long does this food have to last?” he asked, glancing at the other man, taking another bite. “How long will it take us to get to another world?”

“A month.” Riddick answered, taking a bite of his own food.

“That’s... fifty days, right?” Xander squirmed slightly, considering that. “Okay, fifty days. We should have enough to last, I think, so long as we take care of it properly. Do we have enough water in the holds to do us?”

He nodded.

“So long as we don’t do anything stupid, right?” He snickered. “I’ll remember that.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander had never been much of a conservationist before, but he’d also never really been in a situation like this before. Normally, when the issue of ‘we should save water’ came up before, he’d think about the ocean _just_ beyond the edges of the state, and think that maybe people were overreacting a bit. But now, it was a tangible real issue. There was a tank of water under the ship’s hold, and if they used all of that, they were screwed.

When Xander was a kid, Jessica had gotten a little embroidered wall hanging at a yard sale, for a quarter. She’d hung it up in the bathroom, and Xander had always grinned a little when he saw it, amused by the corniness. There was a teddy bear in a bathtub on it, and the phrase _“House hot water limit. Use it all, and you’ll be in it_.”

He sort of felt like that, now. Riddick was training him still, teaching him how to defend himself, and honestly, to be useful. But Xander still didn’t want to give Riddick _any_ reason to want to get rid of him.

So he tried to drink as little of the water as he could, and he sure as hell didn’t shower. He’d always heard those stupid statistics that taking a shower used less water than a bath, but when he had baths as a child back home, he used maybe a couple inches of water in the tub only, and he was pretty sure that his traditional half hour warm soaks would use up _way_ too much water. So he avoided them. It made sense to him. Wasn’t like he was hurting anybody.

Besides, he kind of figured that if there _was_ something wrong with it, someone would say something.

Someone, of course, being Riddick, cause he was the only one around to complain.

Humming slightly, Xander lay on his stomach on the only bed in the ship, chin in his hand. It was a fairly small bed, mostly because it was very short, to allow more space to be used by other things. Still, it was almost square, which meant that he could stretch out pretty well if he really wanted to. He didn’t have the comic books he was used to back at home, but he’d managed to find that on the infonet that Riddick had used to plot their courses and that Johns had used to find information on Riddick’s bounty, there were books. Hell, there were _comic_ books. So he’d downloaded some of them to the data pad, and now was curled on the bed, reading them. It was a nice distraction from the _drama_ his life had been focused on lately, all the fighting and the training and the trying not to get caught. 

What was he thinking, getting himself all tangled up with psycho murderers, anyway?

He glanced up when he heard the door to the little living quarters open, and smirked slightly when his bald companion stepped into the room. Speak of the devil. “Hey, Riddick.”

Riddick didn’t say anything, but did march to the edge of the bed, and without a single word, wrapped his arms around Xander’s middle, and jerked him up off the bed. Ignoring the teenagers squawk of protest, he marched him across the small room, and tugged another door open, shoving him inside.

“What the _hell_?!” Xander yelped, slamming his hands against the frosted glass door. “Not funny, Riddick! Let me out!”

Through that frosted glass, all he could see were shadows. In this case, that shadow was Riddick, who shifted to press his back against the glass, and simply stood there, not moving. 

“ _Not_ funny!” Xander tried to body check the door, but it, and Riddick on the other side of it, weren’t moving an inch. They were as solid and as unmovable as the other three walls around him. After all, for reasons he apparently hadn’t felt were necessary to explain, Riddick had just locked the teenager inside the shower. “Riddick, come on, stop it, let me out! What, are we landing, and you don’t want me to come outside? Okay, I can do that! I can! Just let me out of here, this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, this so isn’t fair!”

The shadow on the other side of the glass shifted slightly, and started inputting commands on the control panel that was outside of the small shower room. Had Xander actually bothered to wash even once since he had left Sunnydale - and yes, he hadn’t showered once in the now nearly five months since he had appeared in the middle of a stolen vessel at Butcher Bay - then he would have known that the controls for the shower itself were not inside the little room like he might have expected. They were on an instrument panel outside the shower. They were really quite ingenious - one could set a specific temperature they wanted the water to be at, could set pressure if they wanted their shower to be softer or harder than standard pressure, and they could put a timer on it so that it would run for exactly as long as they wanted it to. Now, the water used for the shower were not the same as those for drinking, and were recycled over and over for showers, but it _was_ purified between every cycle, so in theory, one could set it on a repeating cycle and shower for days. 

And Riddick was setting the shower.

Xander let out a high pitched yelp of shock when the shower head suddenly turned on, and hot, hard flowing water suddenly slammed down on his head. He slammed against the glass again, howling. “Riddick! Motherfucker, let me out of here! You don’t need to _drown_ me! I’m still in my _clothes_!”

Over the sound of the water, he heard the other man startlingly clearly, but that didn’t really help him feel better. “You stink. You can come out when I can’t smell your stink anymore.”

“Oi!” He slapped the glass. It reminded him a little too much of the prison cell that Riddick had locked him in before. This man had a twisted way of trying to take care of him. Was this his passive aggressive way of dealing with the fact that he really did feel like he had to take care of Xander? Cause that was kind of a dick way to do it if he was. “You could have just _asked_ me to take a shower!”

Riddick snorted.

“What the hell am I supposed to wear when I’m _done_ this shower?! I only have one set of clothes!” Xander hollered, struggling out of his already soaking wet and water heavy clothes, dropping them with a wet slap to the plas-teel floor. “Just run around naked? Is _that_ the plan?”

The other didn’t answer, but he could still see his shadow pressed against the glass, so Xander knew he could hear him.

“You are officially a dickhead,” Xander informed him, grumpily. Apparently the only soap in the shower was a green glycerin bar that was sitting on a little metal soap dish, and he reluctantly scrubbed that through his hair. It took three rinses before it actually felt _clean_ , but at least by the time he was done scrubbing his skin red, he did feel a little better. And as much as he felt like an idiot for doing it, he also settled himself on the floor and scrubbed his clothes with the soap as well - but while he did, he never gave up for a moment on his long string of insults for Riddick. He was starting to run out of all the ones he’d ever heard on TV, read in a comic, or heard Buffy spring at people, and was just starting to come up with some lame ones of his own.

Finally, the water pounding down on Xander and his clothes ran clean and clear of soap suds, and he leaned back in the corner of the small room, still sitting on the floor. 

He also fell silent.

The water turned off first, and he perked up, surprised, then scrambled to cover himself, quickly, when the door opened. “Riddick! Dammit, I’m still naked!”

Riddick stood there holding his jacket, and arched a brow, waiting.

“Oh. Right. Thanks.” He scrambled to his feet, and snatched the jacket from him, wrapping it tightly around himself and trying not to drip everywhere. “What should I do about my wet clothes?”

He shrugged. “Make them not wet, I imagine.”

“Oh, you are a _storehouse_ of useful knowledge today, aren’t you?” Xander grumbled, displeased, and marched past the other man, storming back to the bed, determined to curl back up with his comic books and never think of this again. “And next time you want me to shower, just _ask_! It’s a much easier system.”

Riddick just smirked.

  
 

\---

Xander ducked under the bulkhead at the top of the storage bay entrance, tugging his hood up, higher. It was raining, and it was raining hard. Zephyr Two was apparently something of a flooded planet, and while it was vegetation rich, those plants grew in thick, deep swamps. As far as he was concerned, he’d just found himself on Dagobah, and if he looked closely enough, he figured he’d eventually find a green muppet with a walking stick. Hell, maybe Yoda would be able to teach him some tricks to get him back to Earth faster. 

Tugging his coat tighter about himself, Xander headed down the path, which was made of downed trees tied together. He seemed to remember these being called ‘corduroy roads’ along the pioneer trail they kept learning about at school, and he figured they were probably the same out here. 

They were muddy little wooden roads, though, and he was already picturing the need to clean these boots later, so that he wouldn’t look like such an idiot. He couldn’t see Riddick getting all muddy and dirty. Actually, no, he could see that. His brain was more than happy to supply an image of Riddick dripping wet and muddy, running his palms along across that muddy but bare scalp, then down his chest, sloughing mud off of his skin, then - 

Time to stop _that_ train of thought right there, thank you very much.

Xander cleared his throat, tugging his jacket fully closed and quickly doing up the buttons on the front. Even though the hood kept him mostly dry, it was colder here than he had expected, what with the rain, and Xander was pretty sure he’d be lucky if he left this planet without a cold. Not that he had really been susceptible to getting them, or anything. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d gotten sick. But he figured it could still happen. It would be his luck, after all. 

Ducking under a low door frame, he smirked slightly as he entered the little tavern. It was damp inside, almost as wet as it had been outside, but at least there was a fire burning in a massive fireplace off to the side, and the promise of food and drink.

And a familiar heartbeat in the corner.

Xander’s head snapped in the direction, eyes wide and startled. 

Swearing to himself, feeling stupid, he headed towards the table in the corner, sliding carefully into the booth, across from the man in the tan jacket, the hood covering his face. Bending down a little, he peered into the darkness of the other’s hood, meeting his bright blue eyes. “What happened to staying on the ship and keeping out of sight, you fruitcake? You were supposed to stay there. I was going to _bring_ you food, remember?”

“I got tired of waiting.”

Xander groaned. “I told you I had to get the supplies first... we’re all fueled up, supplied up, all set to go. Just one last thing to do, and that was keeping _you_ out of sight. Remember?”

Riddick shifted slightly in his seat, smirking, and picked up his own glass, sipping at it, quietly. 

“You are such a freak sometimes,” he rolled his eyes, then stood. “Are you hungry? I’ll get you something...”

He shrugged with one shoulder, but Xander knew that was the cue that he could do what he wanted, and he always wanted to get food. He headed to the little bar, and ordered two orders of something he’d never heard of, but looked like it would probably be filling, anyway. And when the girl at the counter asked what he wanted to drink, he picked a random drink off that list, too. He had _no_ clue what it was, just that he really hoped it wasn’t going to be dosed like the last thing he drank in a place like this. A few minutes later, he returned to the table, setting the plates down.

Sure enough, Riddick was more than happy to dig into the plate of food Xander had brought him, and grinning, he dug into his own.

“So,” he said, chewing on a hunk of meat. It was a little stringy and tough, but it was _food_ , and it wasn’t protein bars. As far as he was concerned, that was a good thing. “Were you getting cabin fever, too? I mean, I know I get all... skittish, if we’re in the ship for a really long time. Like it’s... I dunno how to describe it. Like I’ve been stuck inside a tin can, breathing tinned air for too long, and I want to stand on the top of a mountain and just scream at the sky. Or maybe I’m just some kind of moron. Not sure.”

The other snorted, taking a swig of his drink, his eyes never quite leaving Xander.

“It’s hard to have conversations with you, did you know that?” He smirked, and took a sip of his own drink. It was sweet, almost too sweet, but with a sharp tang of alcohol at the back of it, like he could taste it strongest right at the very back of his tongue. “You don’t really talk back.”

Riddick considered him, still sipping at his glass, not speaking. 

“But I really like to talk myself,” he considered that. “So I guess I can fill the silence with my own voice, but a guy gets a little sick of just talking to himself, you know? I mean, you’re a good conversationalist when you _want_ to talk, but you don’t usually talk. I dunno, it’s kinda weird to me.”

“Drink your wine,” he rolled his eyes. 

“It’s so _girly_ , drinking wine,” he snorted, but sipped at the sweet drink. “But wine it is, I guess. I think I’d probably get drunk off my ass on a single shot of anything stronger than that.”

Riddick considered that for a moment, then slid his glass across the table towards Xander.

“...um, what’s this?” he blinked at him, and at the cup, then slowly picked it up, sniffing at it. “Ugh, it smells like the shit Johns drank. You really think I should drink this?”

He arched a brow, waiting.

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop being a bratty kid and do the _manly_ thing,” he snorted, and knocked back the last swallow of what was left. He coughed and gagged slightly on it, but swallowed it anyway, eyes watering. It was strong and rough and hard, but he did manage to get it down, finally, and he slid the empty glass back to him. “That stuff is a little... interesting.”

Riddick snorted, and clapped Xander’s shoulder, standing. 

Xander twisted in his seat, sipping at his wine thoughtfully as he watched the man head up to the bar, speaking lowly to the woman at the bar again. The wine was easier to drink, after the drink Riddick had given him, and it sort of eased his throat, made it feel better. A part of him wondered if this was a slippery slope sort of thing. If he got comfortable drinking, would he fall into alcohol headfirst and never really surface again, like Tony had? Wasn’t alcoholism something of a hereditary thing? He had no idea if alcohol was something his real mother or father had even touched. 

The other man returned to the table, setting a glass in front of Xander, then settling back into his own seat, holding one of his own.

“What is this?” He asked, curiously, picking up the cup. Sniffing at it, it was sharply alcoholic like the other glasses had been, but it smelled different. It was a richer sort of smell, and if he had to describe it, Xander would say that it smelled ‘golden’. He had no idea why he’d chose that word, because he would have honestly never thought to describe something as a colour before, but it was a rich golden amber coloured liquid, and when he sipped at it, carefully, it felt warm, like his insides were being warmed just by the liquid slipping down his throat. “Woah.”

Riddick smirked slightly, settling back in his seat. 

“ _This_ is a man’s drink,” Xander grinned up at him, and sipped at it slowly, pleased. “I could drink this for hours and never get tired of it.”

“Willing to test that theory?”He asked, sipping at his own, quietly. 

He grinned, eagerly, and took a bigger swig of the amber liquid. “I’m willing to give it a shot. Hell, shot for shot, I’ll take you. I’ll totally drink you under the table.”

Riddick arched a brow.

“Oh yeah,” he grinned, deviously. “My parents used to drink enough to drown a whale. Trust me. I am pretty damn sure I could drink an Irishman under the table.”

The other man gestured to the bartender, and tapped their glasses. “Keep these coming.”

“Whoo! Drink ‘em up!”

Xander flopped back in the rounded bench seat that rounded the booth, laughing almost breathlessly. He hadn’t taken one big thing into account when he had suggested that he could drink anyone under the table, which was that in order to really do so, one had to have some kind of tolerance. Xander had no tolerance whatsoever.

So after five glasses of the sweet amber liquid, he was drunk off his ass, and having a _marvellous_ time. 

Riddick didn’t even seem to mind, just kept sliding more drinks across the table to him, smirking slightly. He watched him get more and more drunk, clearly amused by the way he was laughing and occasionally even singing. He was keeping his eye on the other people, obviously, watching to make sure that no one recognized him, or seemed likely to cause a fight, but for the most part, Riddick’s attention was mostly on the drunk as fuck teenager who kept sliding closer to him on the bench.

Resting his head on Riddick’s shoulder, Xander hummed, reaching forward to play with the cuff still around Riddick’s wrist. It just showed under the cuff of his jacket, and if you didn’t know what it was, you might think it was some kind of bracelet. “Do these bother you?”

He shrugged slightly. 

“Hm.” Xander considered that, rubbing his thumb along the metal, then said abruptly. “I’m glad you rescued me.”

Riddick glanced down at him, considering him, smirking slightly. “Which time?”

The teenager laughed, eagerly, curling his fingers around the other’s wrist, holding onto him, quietly. He could feel Riddick’s heartbeat through his fingers, pumping through his veins, thumping in the pulse point there. It made him feel more grounded, more solid, to feel the other’s heartbeat. “Funny, very funny. From Johns. Thank you for rescuing me from Johns.”

“I told you. No one would ever use you again.” He told him, voice rumbling slightly in his chest.

“What if I wanted to be used?”

He twisted slightly, looking down at him, waiting for him to explain properly. 

Xander beamed up at him, and squirmed closer. “Would you fuck me? I’d totally fuck me.”

Riddick snorted.

“No, really.” He squirmed even closer, almost in his lap, biting his lip. “Fuck me?”

Considering him for a few long moments, Riddick abruptly slid out of the bench, and offered Xander his hand. The teenager grinned, and scrambled out after him, wobbling as he grabbed his hand, trying to keep steady on his feet. He was drunk as all hell, and if he tried to stay on his feet much longer, he was going to fall over, so he gripped Riddick’s hand tightly, using him to keep himself somewhat steady. 

“We goin’ back to the ship?” Xander grinned up at him, happy. “I think we should name the ship. What should we name the ship”

“Shut up, kid,” he led him out of the bar, and up the short path towards the ship, where it waited, quietly, on the concrete pad that acted as a landing and launching pad for the settlement’s small port. He tugged Xander’s hood up for him, covering him enough that he wouldn’t get drenched with the rain, but it was still sort of clumsy.

“Shut up kid?” he considered that, tripping over his own feet and catching himself on Riddick’s arm. “That sounds like a terrible name for a ship.”

Shaking his head, Riddick slapped the button that lowered the ramp. 

As they waited for it to sink low enough that they could get on board, Xander let his hands wander a little, drunk, curious fingers running lightly over the other man’s stomach and chest, playing curiously with the waistband of Riddick’s pants, curiously. 

“Come on, kid,” he started leading him up the ramp.

“If you’re going to be calling me kid, then you don’t get to fuck me,” he said loftily, tugging at his belt. “And I would get pissy if you didn’t. So. No more of this ‘kid’ bullshit, got it? I don’t want to be called kid anymore.”

He smirked, and helped him up into the ship proper, closing the ramp behind them, sealing them into the ship itself. 

“Bed.” Xander ordered, lurching free of Riddick’s arm to tumble along on his own power. That only took him so far, before he had to grab a hold of Riddick’s shirt to steady himself again, taking a few deep breaths as he tried to stay steady. Finally, he nodded, and started tugging the other towards that bed, insistently. “It’s not very big. But it’ll be big enough.”

Riddick agreed, nodding, mostly because Xander was really talking just to hear himself talk and he knew that he wasn’t really even expecting a response. 

The back of his knees hitting the bed, Xander tumbled backwards onto it, laughing. Laying on his back, eyes bright, cheeks flushed, he beamed up at the other man, delighted. “Now, see, this is exactly where I need to be. You’d think I’d planned it, or something. Only I’m really wearing too much clothes.”

Laughing, Xander struggled out of his coat, not even undoing it as he did, just tugging it over his head. It caught on his chin, but he just wriggled out of it, stubbornly, then out of his sweater as well. He tried to get out of his pants next, but he hadn’t taken his ass-kicking boots off, and a moment later, he rolled out of the bed, laughing as he tried to sit up, pants around his knees. “Oh god, I am so _skilled_... dammit... I’m stuck.”

Riddick took his hands, tugging him up off the floor, just holding him upright for a moment.

Panting, the teenager hesitated, looking up at him. “Riddick?”

He waited, trying to let him figure out what he wanted to say.

Xander didn’t end up saying anything, just stood up on his tip toes, and did something that he had been wanting to do for quite a long time, and had been suppressing the insane desire as hard as he could have. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he wanted to do this, but he _did_ want to do this, so he curled his fingers around the straps of Riddick’s tank top, and pressed his nervous-licked lips against the other’s dry mouth, less of a kiss and more of a clumsy, awkward press of mouth on mouth.

Whether Xander had cause to question this decision of his, or whether he meant to ever pull back from the amateurish kiss, he never really had that chance.

Within seconds of that first awkward press, one of Riddick’s hands was curled against the back of Xander’s skull, fingers tangled in his hair as he held him up, and the taller man surged into the kiss, possessively, claiming him completely. His other palm pressed against Xander’s lower back, pushing his t-shirt up as he held him closer, taking control with an almost instinctual ease.

Groaning softly into the kiss, he held on tighter, trying to replace the dull buzzing sting of the alcohol that still settled on the back of his tongue with the taste of Riddick. It was a much better flavour.

Struggling to kick his boots off, Xander finally got them off, one by one, and kicked his pants off, awkwardly, nearly tripping as he held onto Riddick, using the taller man to hold himself up as he finally got them off, and finally broke the kiss to gasp for breath, chest heaving. “Fuck, Riddick...”

“I know.”

He pushed him down to the bed, and didn’t even wait for Xander to bounce on the mattress, really, before he was already straddling the other to the bed, pinning him down with his hips as he consumed Xander’s mouth again, demanding and ravishing, taking control and taking everything Xander had to offer. His hands were heavy on the mattress on either side of Xander, bracing himself as he nipped at his lower lip, nipping hard enough to draw blood.

Xander groaned, arching up into the other, and moaned, “ _Riddick_...”

Riddick toed his own boots off, dropping them beside the bed, and leaned up, tugging his tank top off, dropping it off the bed as well. 

Panting, he licked his lips, and reached up to unbuckle Riddick’s belt with clumsy, drunk fingers. It was an awkward attempt, but he was bound and determined to get that belt and the cargo pants they were holding up off as quickly as he could manage. He finally managed to get it undone, and unbuckled the pants as quickly as he could manage, shoving Riddick’s pants down. “Ha, knew I could do it!”

The other kicked his pants off, and surged into claiming Xander’s mouth again, kissing him hard and demanding as he pressed into him. 

Gasping, he arched up into Riddick, and groaned. “ _Please_...”  
  
[Advice from a Caterpiller](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/47702.html)  


 

 

  
 


	6. White Rabbit - Advice from a Caterpiller

  


  
**White Rabbit - Advice from a Caterpiller  
**   


  


“Oh god, I’m going to be sick...”  


Xander rolled over in bed, groaning as he did, but didn’t actually get sick. Fortunately. Still, his stomach churned a little, and it took a few deep breaths before it started finally settling. It still felt a little queasy, but at least he wasn’t swallowing bile anymore.

Reaching up to scrub his hands over his face, Xander _tried_ to wake up, to shake off the haze that was filling his head. 

But he couldn’t quite get the fuzz out. It was like his head was full of bees that were flying angrily through his skull, rattling around about in the cavity where his brain was supposed to be. Add a mouth full of cotton balls to that, and he felt royally like someone had managed to beat him black and blue. Xander actually stuck his tongue out, swiping at his tongue with his finger, trying to get the gross sticky fuzz feeling off, but it didn’t really work. He still felt like he’d eaten a moldy cat

Sighing softly, he rolled over onto his back again, and took a deep breath. Ugh, he could still taste alcohol.

He was pretty damn sure this was going to be enough of a prompt to never drink again.

Maybe.

The room was dark, only dimly lit by a faintly glowing strip of emergency lights that ran around the room, halfway down the walls. It was enough light to figure out the features of the room, and he was used to the rest of the ship being this dark anyway, because Riddick hated wearing the goggles, and would rather walk around in the dim light. He supposed it really didn’t make much of a difference if the living quarters were dark too, that worked for him. It relaxed his eyes, too. Maybe he didn’t have that cool seeing-in-the-dark power, but it still relaxed him, too. 

Sighing softly, scrubbing his face with his hands again, Xander looked up when the door slid open from the cabin, and Riddick stepped into the living quarters. He wasn’t wearing the goggles, as he had expected, but Xander _hadn’t_ expected the other to be completely _naked_.

He gaped at him, not even aware that his jaw was hanging open as the other walked over to the bed, and sat on the edge of it. “Uh...”

“Eat,” Riddick handed him a large, red, fleshy fruit. 

Xander hesitated, slowly taking it, considering it. “Uh. Right. Thanks. So ah... how’re you?”

The other’s brows furrowed, and he frowned slightly, looking at Xander like he was insane. “Fine. Eat. You need to get your strength up.”

“Right.” He sat up, then gasped, surprised. 

Sitting up was something he’d done every day about eight million times, but sitting up to a startling shot of pain up his lower back startled him. It wasn’t a screaming pain, or anything, just sort of a sore ache that made it uncomfortable to sit up properly, and he leaned back into the scant pillows, not wanting that dull ache anymore. It really bothered him. 

Where the hell had it come from?

Oh god.

Oh _god_.

Xander bolted back up, ignoring the pain in his lower back in order to gape at the other man, properly, jaw hanging again. He wasn’t an expert on this by any stretch of the imagination, but Riddick was naked, and a quick check under the blankets said that he was, too. And it didn’t really take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly _why_ his ass might be aching. 

“What is wrong with you?” Riddick frowned.

“...nothing.” He leaned back into the pillows again, and took a bite of the fruit, quickly. It was easier to focus on the food than on the fact that _oh my god I think I slept with a man and I don’t even fucking remember doing it_!

“Bullshit. I can hear your heart.”

“Right. Stop listening to my heart.” He held up a single finger, swallowing. “It’s really creepy that you can tell if I’m lying to you just because my heart speeds up.”

“You know when I’m in the room because of my heartbeat,” Riddick said seriously, leaning closer to him, forehead lightly brushing Xander’s as they shared their air for a moment. “Stop listening to my heartbeat, then.”

Xander swallowed. “...I can’t.”

“You see?.” He leaned back, resting his back against the wall at the end of the little bed, bracing one of his legs up on the bed, calmly. “What is it?”

Clearing his throat, he squirmed for a moment, then took a bite of his fruit again, trying to focus on the chewing of the food instead of on the question, then swallowed, and finally said, “Did we, uh... last night...”

Riddick waited, calmly.

“Okay. Last night. Did we have sex?”

He shrugged.

“...what, now _you_ don’t remember?!” Xander squawked, sitting up. “I was depending on you to be the one who remembered what the hell had happened last night here! Seriously! Did we have sex or not?!”

Riddick just curled his fingers in the back of Xander’s hair, and tugged him forward, making the teenager shift up onto his knees as he pulled him forward, and without answering the question, he just tugged him closer and kissed him fiercely, as though laying claim to him. 

And Xander just groaned, melting into the other’s chest, and would have just fallen over if Riddick didn’t hold him up.

The other broke the kiss, just leaning back to rest his head on the wall, smirking as Xander sort of sank down into his lap, head resting on the other’s chest. Panting, Xander lay there for a few long minutes, then finally lifted his head a little, considering the man for a long moment. “...I guess that’s a yes, then?”

He snorted.

“Okay, okay, I get it. It’s a yes. Dammit, I really thought that if I ever had sex with a man, I’d actually remember, you know, having it. I haven’t really slept with a man before, you know? It’s kind of... um... not what I expected to be doing with my life? Dammit, does this mean I’m gay?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Well, you know what gay _is_ , right?” Xander hesitated, half sitting up. He wasn’t really sure if the reluctance of sitting up was because he _liked_ being sort of in Riddick’s lap, or because his ass still hurt. Apparently they’d had a good damn night. 

Riddick shrugged.

“Oh god dammit, this is making my head hurt.”

Xander did sit up properly this time, stubbornly, and leaned back against the pillows and the other wall. The bed wasn’t really big enough for two people, so that when they sat there facing each other, their legs sort of had to settle together on the short bed. He took a deep breath, and just took several more bites of the fruit, swallowing, trying to look less like an idiot in the face of what he was trying to figure out. It was difficult to explain to anyone. Explaining what gay-ness was to the man he’d just had gay sex with was even harder.

“Okay.” Xander held up his hands. “You know how most times people have sex, it’s a guy and a girl, right? Well, that’s called straight. When there are two women, or two men... that’s gay.”

That was a lot easier to explain than Xander had expected.

Riddick nodded, considering that.

“Right so... does that make us gay?”

“No,” Riddick swung his legs off of the bed, and headed towards the door. “Take a shower. You reek of sex.”

“No?” Xander called after him, blinking. “What do you mean, no? I mean, you’re the one who fucked me last night! Isn’t that pretty friggin’ gay?!”

He hesitated in the doorway, hand on the door frame, then glanced back at Xander, those silver blue eyes almost piercing straight through him. “In slams, you took what came to you. Life is just a big slam.”

“So what, I’m your _slam bitch_?!” he squawked.

Riddick grinned, almost a devious expression. “Well, you didn’t want to be called kid anymore.”

“Dammit, I’m gonna kill you!” Xander scrambled out of the bed, then yelped as that _hurt_ more than he had expected, and settled for just throwing the fruit Riddick had brought him at the other man’s head. He ducked, naturally, and it splattered somewhere beyond in the cabin. “Not funny, Riddick!”

“Take a shower,” he ordered, then closed the door behind him.

“You ass,” he muttered, knowing that Riddick could hear him, and taking a deep sense of pleasure from the knowledge that he would.

  
 

\---

The funny thing was, Xander thought, was the fact that they didn’t talk about it. 

They didn’t really dress fully anymore, and Xander walked around half of the time in just the sweater Riddick had gotten on one of the planets they’d stopped on. It hung almost to his knees, and at least it was better than walking around naked, which his companion did, half the time. It just got comfortable, after awhile, to walk around mostly naked and not even care. Xander still brought the other food, and complained about the other’s sense of non-humour, and sometimes Riddick still locked him in the bathroom. Apparently he didn’t shower often enough. _He_ just thought that Riddick liked laughing at him.

And sometimes, Riddick would just rest his hand on the back of Xander’s neck. And sometimes Xander would dart over to where Riddick was sitting to bend over and kiss him firmly. And sometimes Riddick climbed into the bed that Xander still slept in every night. 

Once, and only once, Xander had woken up curled in the other’s arms. 

But they never talked about it.

It just sort of _happened_ , now, but they never talked about how or why it was happening. Xander often thought that it was strange, and that it didn’t really make sense. After all, he hadn’t been lying when he told Riddick that he didn’t exactly think that sex with a man was _in_ his future. He’d never been attracted to a man before. But he was attracted to Riddick, as much as it didn’t make sense. Hell, he didn’t even know if Riddick was really attracted to him, or if he really was his convenient “slam bitch”. But whether he was convenient or not, the fact that they just didn’t talk about it made him wonder why it was happening. 

In the end, he figured that if it meant Riddick wasn’t going to dump him on some colony world somewhere, then he would sleep with him forever.

Cradling a bowl of rice to his chest, Xander headed down into the cabin, leaning against the back of Riddick’s chair as he took a spoonful of the rice, eating. “So. Is that our next stop?”

Riddick glanced up from the screen, frowning at him for a moment, then frowned at the bowl Xander was holding.

“Want some?” He grinned, scooping up a spoonful of the brown rice, and holding it out towards Riddick, wriggling it playfully. It was sort of like a parent trying to tempt their child to eat food by playing airplane, only he was a sixteen year old - was he seventeen now? He didn’t even know if his birthday had passed yet or not - and he was taunting a convicted murderer with a spoon of rice.

The other plucked the spoon from Xander’s fingers, and ate it before handing the spoon back.

Xander snickered, and leaned on the chair again, considering the planet outside that front window. “This one looks as wet as that last world was. Is there even _land_ there?”

“Man made islands.” Riddick answered, and he let his hand hang over the armrest of the chair, his fingertips idly brushing Xander’s kneecap. “Odin.”

“Just Odin?” he glanced at him. “Not Odin three, or Odin seventeen, or... Just Odin?”

“There’s only one planet in this system.” He shrugged, calmly. “Just Odin.”

“Hm.” Xander nodded, eating another spoonful of his rice, considering the planet itself. “How long has it been since we even landed on a planet last? A month? Or two?”

“Almost three.”

“Dammit, really?” He blinked, surprised. “How’d you manage to make the fuel last this long this time?”

“The fuel has never been the issue.” Riddick shook his head, running his fingers idly up the inside of Xander’s thigh. “The issue is the food and the water.”

“Wait... then why have I been buying new fuel cells each stop?” Xander yelped.

“We’ve been pushing harder than we should.” 

“Oh. So we’re breaking them.” He whistled lowly, considering that. “Well, that makes a lot more sense, then. We’ve been busting them cause we’re going hard... wait... why are we going so hard? I thought that since Johns is dead and all, that no one knew where to find us. Or are you just trying to find some place to dump me off, still?”

The other glanced up at him, curling his fingers around the back of Xander’s knee, as though just holding him there. “Do you want me to dump you off?”

“ _No_ ,” Xander flushed bright red. 

Riddick smirked, almost deviously, and just stroked the back of Xander’s knee with his thumb. 

“So, um.” He cleared his throat, swallowing. “How long _have_ we been travelling together, then? I mean, in total. Since Butcher Bay, or maybe... well, actually, since you stabbed Johns. How long have we been travelling since you stabbed Johns?”

The other frowned, considering that for a few moments. “Six months and two weeks.”

“Wow. I totally _did_ miss my birthday.”

Riddick glanced up at him, arching his brow. 

“I was about two months from my birthday before all this shit happened. And our months are even shorter than these U.Y. ones, so it’s been a long _time_ since my birthday, actually. Congratulations, Riddick, you’re still fucking a jail-bait kid, but I’m a _little_ less jail-bait than I was before.”

“How old are you?” 

“Do you even care?” Xander rolled his eyes, and ate another spoonful of his rice. It was going cold. Dammit. Setting it down on the control panel, he sighed softly, leaning a little more on Riddick’s chair. “Does it actually matter?”

The man tugged him forward, faster than he expected, and dropped Xander right into his lap. “How old are you?” He asked, again.

He squirmed a little, biting his lip as he considered Riddick. Leaning back a little, he rested his lower back against the control panel, holding onto the calf that he had pulled up towards him on Riddick’s lap. “Well. I’m seventeen, now.”

The other nodded, and smirked. 

“And...?”

Riddick arched a brow, not saying a word.

“Oi, hello, I told you how old _I_ am, come on, tell me how old _you_ are! It’s really only fair.”

He snorted. “Twenty-three.”

Xander blinked at him.

“...yes?”

“You’re only twenty-three?” He squirmed a little, again, considering the man in front of him. “I always thought were, I dunno, older than that. I dunno how much older than that I figured you were, but... twenty-three. You’re not even a decade older than me. I guess I figured you were, I dunno, at least thirty. Huh. Well, this is a little less jail-bait than I - dammit, you’ve escaped from like, twelve prisons! If I was your age, I wouldn’t have been able to get out of like... two? Not even!” 

“Does it bother you?” He ran his palm down Xander’s calf, down his foot, then back up along the sole of his foot. 

“What would it matter if it did?” Xander pointed out, trying not to laugh. He was _ticklish_ , dammit.

Riddick lifted his knees, which made him slide forward along the other’s thighs, pressing closer to him. The teen draped his arms around the other’s shoulders, grinning, and pressed his forehead against Riddick’s. “So is that what this is? You and me, we don’t talk about what we’re doing, but we do it anyway?”

He didn’t answer. His head snapped up, eyes focused on something he couldn’t actually seem to see. 

A few months ago, Xander might have called about ‘earth to Riddick’, or something. Made a bad joke about the other focusing on some voices in his head, or something. But Riddick had spent the last six months teaching him how to take care of himself, how to focus his thoughts, how to harness his instincts. 

When Riddick’s head snapped up to focus, so did Xander’s.

“That’s not good,” Xander slid out of Riddick’s lap, scrambling to the instrument panel, flicking through some of the controls as he connected to the sensor grid, fingers dancing across the touch pads as he worked quickly. It had taken him awhile to get used to how computers worked out here in space, but like most teenagers, it had taken him almost no time at all to get himself used to the computers. Fingers working fast, he swore in a language he’d never even heard before he came to space, and spun to look at Riddick. “Dark Athena.”

“We should have blown that ship,” Riddick stood, and moved towards the living quarters at a swift pace. 

Xander nodded, and dashed after him. 

Riddick was already pulling his boots on when Xander got there, and tugged his tank top on before handing Xander his own pants. “Be ready.”

“Oh, I’m so ready. I’d fight ‘em naked if I had to,” Xander nodded, and tugged on his pants, wriggling them up quickly before he shoved his feet into his boots. He probably looked ridiculous, in tight pants that looked like they were made for girls, Riddick’s huge sweater that hung off one of his shoulders like he was about to dance in an eighties movie, and ass kicking boots. Hell, his hair was starting to curl around his chin now, and if it weren’t for the fact that training _hard_ with Riddick had filled out some muscles he hadn’t even realized he _had_ , he probably would look like Riddick’s girl. 

As it was, he still looked like his bitch.

He’d teach them who was whose bitch here, Xander thought, as he snatched the two hunting knives he’d adopted as his own off the shelf, tucking one in the back of his jeans, and wielding the other as he darted out of the living quarters to meet Riddick in the storage bay. 

...he was totally Riddick’s bitch.

But they were totally gonna be his. 

Riddick had the ulaks curled around his hands as he waited. The ship shook slightly under their feet as Xander walked to his side, and though Riddick knew for sure what it was, Xander was right in his suspicion that it meant that the larger vessel had locked onto them again. It shook again, and the spider legs that had drawn their old ship in was drawing them in again.

“Can we steal a ship with weapons systems, this time?” Xander asked, squeezing the blade handle tightly. 

“Sounds good to me.” Riddick grinned wolfishly as the ship rocked one last time, then went still, and cutting torches started carving their way through the door in front of them.

“Awesome,” he grinned.

  
 

\---

Xander grunted as he pulled himself up, teeth grit hard. Riddick seemed to be able to hop up level by level with no effort, just pulling himself along, hand over hand on the pipes, but _he_ had a lot more trouble than that. Maybe his upper body strength just wasn’t nearly as good, but dammit, he wasn’t going to get left behind in a cell again, and if he didn’t manage to keep up with Riddick, he was afraid that was exactly where he’d end up again.

That wasn’t happening, dammit. 

It was important to him, _really_ important to him, that he was able to keep up with him. He had to prove that he was worthwhile here, that he was worth all those times Riddick had saved him.

Riddick’s fingers closed around his wrist, and he pulled him up into the air duct with him.

“I was almost up myself,” he panted, frustrated. 

“I know. Hurry up.” Riddick ducked down into the air duct itself, walking through the narrow passageways. The ulaks glinted dully at his sides as he moved, which made Xander wonder about his own vision. After all, it was nearly pitch black up here, but still Xander was able to see it. Maybe his night vision was better than he had expected it to be. 

“I’m coming,” Xander said quietly, and followed the other through the blackness, focusing on the heart beat of the man in front of him. That was how he navigated. By Riddick’s heartbeat. 

The man ahead of him stopped, and Xander pressed closer to him, listening hard to see why the other had stopped. His heartbeat hadn’t sped up, so he knew it wasn’t because some threat was in the air duct with them, and it hadn’t slowed, so he hadn’t been injured. There was a soft shift in the air around them, however, a breath of slightly staler air that told him that there was a vent ahead of them, and he laid a palm on Riddick’s spine - just over the sweet spot - and murmured, “We going down?”

“No.” Riddick glanced back at him. “Stay here.”

His eyes widened, sharply, startled. “What? No. Riddick, _no_. That’s not happening. That’s what you did to me last time, and I am _not_ going to do that again. There is no way that is happening again. You are _not_ leaving me behind.”

“Last time, you went catatonic.” The other man grit his jaw, sternly.

“ _No_.” Xander pointed at him. “They murdered Lynn. That was what happened. Lynn - Lynn is already dead, Riddick. I won’t do it again.”

“And if they shoot me?”

He hesitated. 

“Stay here,” Riddick said again, apparently convinced, and moved forward, wrapping his fingers in the grill and tugging it loose, setting it off to the side, inside the air vent. He shifted forward, then paused when Xander gripped his shirt. “I am not above stopping you.”

Xander twisted his fingers in the back of Riddick’s tank top. His hands were leaving a bloody smear in the fabric, and there was blood smeared on his jaw, but his teeth were grit tightly and he had a sharp, almost furious expression on his face. When the guards had assaulted their shuttle, Riddick had cut them to pieces, and while Xander hadn’t killed anyone - he still had never managed to kill anyone, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not - he had been actively involved in the reverse-assault. At least he’d dealt a lot of the bloodshed that was staining his hands bloody. “Riddick.” he said, voice steadier than it had been before. “Stay here.”

The man stiffened, teeth bared as he snarled at him, then halted abruptly.

Abruptly he lowered his head. 

Xander took a deep breath, and unhooked his fingers from the other’s shirt, crawling forward, and gripping the edge of the air vent, lowering himself out of it. His feet settled on the top of a metal crate, and he lowered himself down, considering the large room. The bridge was busy, dozens of people moving around, but the worst part of it was the person sitting in the captain’s chair. 

He glanced back at the air shaft, not surprised that narrowed blue eyes were glowering at him. 

“Stay there,” he mouthed, and lowered himself down off the crate, tugging his knife out of the back of his belt.

His heart was pounding. Xander knew that this was probably the stupidest thing he’d done _ever_ in his whole life, that there was no way that he was going to be able to do this himself, that either he was going to be murdered before he even got to the captain’s chair or he’d be murdered shortly after he got there. And if he managed to _not_ be murdered, it was going to be because Riddick didn’t listen to him, and came to rescue him anyway. And yeah, he felt sort of guilty for turning his inexplicable ability to sometimes make Riddick do what he wanted against him, but dammit, sometimes he had to do this.

Tightening his grip on the knife, Xander straightened, and stood. No one noticed him at first, and if they did, they seemed to assume that he was supposed to be there, because no one tried to stop him.

Until he shifted forward to stand in front of the captain’s chair, and said, coldly, “Hello, Captain Revas.”

The woman started, gaping up at him.

Xander smirked slightly, and flicked the knife up. “You don’t die easy, do you?”

“You’re that brat,” she snarled, sitting up, teeth bared. All around the bridge, men were pulling up their guns, ready to shoot at the intruder. “You’re the _brat_ that lost me Riddick, you mother _fucker_!”

“You lost Riddick yourself. Honestly, I was just kind of there. But I’m not _just kind of there_ anymore. My name is Alexander Lavelle Harris. You killed Lynn Silverman. Prepare to die,” he said calmly, and gladly relied on the instincts that Riddick had drilled into him. 

That is, he simply ducked.

And the shot that an over-zealous, eager for promotion guard had fired at him went over his head and straight into Revas’ chest, throwing the woman back in her seat, blood splattering outwards from the massive hole that the shot had left in her chest. Her own man had just shot her, and from the look of that massive wound, she wasn’t coming back this time.

_Now_ they noticed that Xander was there. 

_Now_ the men leapt forward, firing wildly as they tried to kill him, and Xander ducked and bobbed and wove. He was getting hit, too, shots were hitting him, but he couldn’t stop. If he stopped now he’d be dead and if he was dead, well, then, dammit, his revenge for Lynn was useless in the end. So he fought through the pain, slashing like he’d been taught, ducking low and slashing the blade across the Achilles’ Tendons of the men who made the mistake of getting anywhere near him, so that they collapsed heavily. 

One man got closer than he’d expected, and Xander did what he had to, slamming the knife deep into the man’s thigh, jerking it out and trying not to wince when he let out a high pitched wail of pain and collapsed to the floor. 

“Mother _fucker_!” Xander yelped, ducking under another wide swing. “Come _on_ , punks, make my day!”

Someone finally got the hint, and didn’t shoot at Xander like the other’s had, and didn’t step close enough to be stabbed like some of the others either, just finally used their brain and swung his gun like a club. It cracked up against the side of Xander’s head, and he reeled to the side, stunned and gasping in pain. It was a harder strike than he’d expected, sending him reeling slightly, bashing into one of the control panels, striking it hard enough that sparks flicked across the controls, and a fire started a few feet away.

Whimpering, unable to keep his feet under him, Xander staggered to his knees. 

The man with the gun-club slammed it down on Xander’s shoulder again, and he crumpled further, struggling to get back up, getting one foot under him, then sagging again when the gun cracked across his temple, and blood started running down the side of his face. 

“No, not like this...” Xander keened, struggling to get his feet under him.

“No,” another voice agreed, and a flashing ulak removed the man’s head. The gun, which had been raised to rain another blow down on Xander, crumpled to the floor, and the man’s headless body followed a few moments later, limp and dying and dead. 

Xander forced his feet under himself, finally, and stumbled towards the elevator at the edge of the bridge. The other men were occupied with his guardian angel in combat boots, and Xander knew that he only had this brief window of time to get away from the guards, to get a chance for Riddick and himself to get the hell out of Dodge. He slashed at the one man that actually tried to stop him, not even able to focus enough to see what happened to him, but he didn’t try to come at him anymore, and he was able to get to the elevator itself. “Riddick,” he called, trying to keep the pained waver out of his voice. “Now. We need to go _now_.”

The man didn’t even turn, but he abruptly grabbed the edge of one of the control panels, pushing up and flipping over it. For a brief, impressive moment, he hung in air, upside down, in a hand stand high above the heads of the few living men left, then he swung his legs back and landed on his feet, already running to the elevator, which Xander had already started moving.

He dropped into a runner’s slide for the last piece, like a desperate slide for home, and slid through the swiftly narrowing gap, landing lightly on the floor beside Xander.

Xander laughed softly, breathlessly, and said, eagerly, “I have never been more glad for you to ignore me.”

Riddick snarled slightly, and moved closer to him, moving his fingers across the teen’s chest and shoulders, then across his back. He looked displeased at the amount of blood he found, but finally stood and tugged Xander up with him. “Never do that again.”

“Yes sir,” he panted, leaning on the other’s side. 

“My bitch doesn’t die for me.”

He snorted, grinning up at him. “Stop calling me bitch. Shit, that’s almost as bad as kid. Does this mean we get to have ‘thank god we’re alive’ sex when we get back into space? Because I would _really_ like to have some ‘thank god we’re alive’ sex. I hear that’s the best kind there is.”

Riddick didn’t get a chance to answer, because the elevator slid down into place on the hanger bay deck, and they actually had to pay attention. 

Revas had learned her lesson from last time. She may be lying dead up in her chair right now, but before she had died, she had given orders for the ships to be better protected this time, literally putting a guard standing in front of each ship. This time they didn’t have Johns sneaking on board one of the ships to help them, but they were strong enough to do this anyway, far as Xander was concerned. Sure, his head was dizzy and he was really starting to hurt now that his adrenaline was wearing off. But he could do this.

Well, Riddick could do this.

And Riddick _did_ do this, apparently picking out the ship he wanted from a distance, and led the way there, killing anyone that tried to get in their way. Stepping into the airlock, he triggered the door, and shifted the ulaks, ready to kill the next one in the way.

Only the man was waiting for them the moment the air locks opened, and Riddick had to move quickly to protect them both.

Xander shifted along the edge of the room, trying to stay out of the way. Were he back on Earth, this would have been his cue to get out of the crypt or the temple, just to make sure that one of the witches or the vampires or the demons thought that he would make excellent bait or an excellent sacrifice. Here, though, here he was supposed to be more useful, supposed to be able to do _something_. Anger at his own helplessness boiled up in his throat, and Xander tugged his knife back out of his belt, and stormed forward. Riddick knocked the guard that he was fighting back, towards Xander, and he took care of it.

Stepping forward without hesitation - though perhaps he should have hesitated, he didn’t really know why he was doing this, other than the fury and the sheer deep desperation he had to protect Riddick, even though he didn’t need protection, but he did it - Xander swung an arm around the guard’s neck.

The guard never saw it coming, probably hadn’t even known that Xander was there.

But the guard did notice when Xander stabbed the knife deep into the man’s throat, and dragged it sharply across, slicing his throat so viciously that he slashed it open straight down to the spinal cord, then he dropped the body.

Riddick stared at him, surprised. He clearly had not expected Xander to do that. He couldn’t blame him for not having guessed that he would. _He_ hadn’t realized that he was going to do that.

“We can go,” he said at last, hands trembling slightly. 

He took the knife from Xander’s shaking hand. He wasn’t even sure how he was keeping a grip on it at all, considering how easily the other pulled it away. 

“Let’s go,” Riddick agreed.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Riddick.” 

The man didn’t have to look up. He’d known Xander was standing in the doorway, of course. That was why he was sitting on the edge of one of the cryo pods, instead of inside it. He’d been waiting for him to come. He did, however, set aside the knife he had been polishing. It was the one Xander had used to kill the guard. You would never have guessed it had been used for a bloody murder, to look at it now. 

Xander stood in the doorway, hair wet and dripping slightly. He’d headed to the shower the moment they were out into space, and stayed in there a very long time. All exposed skin was red and looked like he’d scrubbed himself absolutely raw. 

But he was alive, and something about that was making his blood sing.

“Do we have to go into cryo right away?”

“No.” He said simply. 

Xander nodded, and stepped into the room properly, bare feet slapping dully on the floor as he padded up to the side of Riddick’s cryo pod, stepping between his knees. He set his hands quietly on the other’s shoulders, using his thumbs to rub the other’s pulse points, lightly, considering him. “I’m sorry.”

He arched a brow, waiting for an explanation.

“I did the catatonic thing again.”

“You did the beat to a point that would have killed a normal man thing, and then you killed a threat that was trying to attack me.” Riddick said, calmly. “There was no catatonic there.”

“Okay, I didn’t do the catatonic thing.” Xander sighed, and pressed his forehead against the other’s, quietly. “You’re right. I didn’t even go catatonic at all. But I - I just... went nuts. I like... lost control. I forgot everything you taught me, and I just grabbed a guy, and I just went all Jack Nicholson on him! That’s not _normal_ for me, Riddick!”

“You acted on instinct.” He reached up, sliding his fingers into the curls at the base of Xander’s neck, cupping the back of it. “This is not bad.”

Xander closed his eyes, pressing his forehead against the other man’s, trembling slightly. “I killed a man, Riddick. And I killed that man for you. I mean, that’s not normal, is it? That can’t be normal.”

“Why would you want to be normal?”

He hesitated, looking up at him, brown eyes meeting silver blue. 

Riddick smirked slightly.

“I - I just guess I never thought of it that way.” He frowned. “Isn’t normal supposed to be like, the _goal_? To be normal, to be like everyone else?”

“If you were like everyone else, you would be dead.” Riddick rested his second hand on the base of Xander’s spine, his thumb running down the vertebrae, bump bump bump down each joint. He didn’t seem to mind that Xander had chosen to wear only his sweater again, and it was easy for him to reach his spine. “If you were like everyone else, you and I would not be here, right now.”

“Are you saying that if I was normal, you wouldn’t be sleeping with me?” he asked, smirking softly.

“Yes,” he said calmly, and leaned up to press his lips firmly against Xander’s. 

He melted into the pressure, eyes falling shut as he pressed closer to Riddick, fingers curling at the base of the other’s skull, holding closer to him, a tremor running through his body as he squirmed into him. “Riddick,” he breathed.

“You asked for something, on the Athena,” he rumbled, pressing his hand into the very base of Xander’s spine. 

“And I still want that thank god we’re alive sex,” he breathed. 

“Good.”Riddick tugged him closer, so that he was straddling his thighs.  
  
[Pig and Pepper](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/48041.html)  



	7. White Rabbit - Pig and Pepper

  


  
**White Rabbit - Pig and Pepper**

 

 

Xander had no idea how long he’d been in cryo for. He just knew that he was in it, because as much as everyone seemed to think that cryo was a deep, dreamless coma that just stopped a person in time, he felt aware within in at all times. He could smell the slight burning of the engines, he could smell the bitter tang of the chemicals that kept him in cryo sleep, he could hear the engines roaring dully in the distance. 

But he dreamed, within cryo. Always. Strange little dreams that didn’t make sense.

Ducking under a branch, he walked through the woods, bare feet padding softly on the dirt. Every time he dreamed, he seemed to find himself here. It was beautiful and clear here, though the skies were always darker than Earth skies ever were, and the leaves on those trees were almost see through. Clearly, he wasn’t dreaming of being on Earth.

Stepping out beyond the edge of the tree line, he hesitated as he considered the rocky field that spread wide below him, then started walking through the long, golden grass. He was dressed only in Riddick’s sweater, and the breeze whirled lightly around him, ruffling his hair, curling around his limbs, quietly. 

He felt safe here. But sad, though. Safe, but sad.

It was strange.

He frowned, brushing his fingertips over the top of the blades of grass, wondering why he was dreaming of this. His dreams here were never terribly clear, but usually he was _doing_ something, like running from Riddick, or hunting in the woods, or once, just having sex with Riddick in a cave, on a bed made of animal furs. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, this time. He was just wandering through this world his dreams seemed to have created for him.

Except that, as he walked, he finally realized there was someone out here with him.

Frowning slightly, Xander shifted his aimless walking into a deliberate walk, and headed over to the woman, who stood near a large standing stone in the centre of the field, one of her hands resting on the stone. As he came closer, he realized that it was carved, with whorls and swirls all over the stone. 

She turned slightly as he approached, smiling softly at him. 

The woman was dressed all in white, as was her hair, but the more he tried to look at her, the more she seemed to disappear, sort of flitter in and out of his view. Was she a ghost? It almost seemed to make sense that she was a ghost, it had been a long time since he’d seen anything that had made sense to him, like ghosts did. 

“Hello,” he said, quietly, considering her. 

“Hello, Alexander,” she said softly, her voice almost as insubstantial as she seemed to be. 

“Xander,” he corrected her. 

The woman laughed softly, and dropped her hand from the massive standing stone, folding her hands in front of her, smiling at Xander. She looked something like Mona Lisa, smiling but with a secret. Enigmatic smile. “Yes, of course.”

“So... what are you doing here?” He frowned slightly. “The only person I ever see here is Riddick.”

“You would,” she said lightly, stepping closer to him. She moved like a ghost would, sort of floating across the ground, her feet not really touching the grass, which didn’t bend beneath her steps. She was sort of floating through the grass. “I have been waiting a long time to speak to you. That’s why I am here.”

“Why would you want to talk to me?” Xander blinked at her, confused. 

She stepped closer to him, and offered him her hand. He took it, instinctively, and bent slightly in a rough bow, kissing her knuckles lightly. Her hand was cool, cooler than a normal person’s skin would be, but more solid than he would expect, for a ghost. “My name is Aereon,” she said lightly. “I have waited for a very long time to meet a Lavelle.”

His nose crinkled. “Ugh. I hate that name.”

Aereon laughed softly, and shifted, her dress ruffling around her in the wind. Where the wind touched her, she went almost insubstantial, and he considered that, amazed. “Xander. You are the Lavelle, and you carry our last hope.”

“Whose last hope?” he frowned, confused.

“Ours. The Elementals.” She stepped closer to him, holding his hand between two of hers, wind cool palms pressed into his skin. “We have calculated the odds, and there are only the slightest slivers of hope in the future. You carry it.”

“I don’t get that.” Xander shook his head, stepping back a little. “Wait. The universe is in danger?”

“It is,” she said quietly, squeezing his hand. “There is a threat coming. The threat is already here, but it will come to us in the very near future, with the intention of destroying us all. Converting us. There is one hope left for the universe, and you are carrying that hope.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” he frowned, confused. 

She squeezed his hand tighter, tight enough that it was painful. “You carry our hope, Lavelle Alexander.”

“Xander Lavelle,” he gasped, eyes bolting open.

Riddick frowned at him, holding his hand tightly. He was the one who was crushing his hand, and realizing that Riddick was there, he slumped back into the cryo bed, bonelessly, closing his eyes. 

“Riddick... why are you crushing my hand?” he murmured.

“You were moving.” He slowly released his hand, and shifted to sit beside him again, quietly. Both cryo pods were hanging open, and Riddick was half sitting within Xander’s, beside his legs. “You were moving more than I have ever seen a person move during cryo before.”

Xander considered him, frowning slightly. “I was moving?”

“Considerably.” he considered him seriously. “Thrashing. You were beating on the glass.”

He winced, and shifted up in the pod, carefully, wincing slightly. He felt sore, which made him think that Riddick was probably right, that he’d been thrashing about within the pod, slamming into the sides and top. “Fuck. All of my body hurts.”

Riddick rested his hands on the other’s hips, and shifted him closer. Twisting Xander slightly, he began rubbing his shoulders. 

Xander groaned deeply, and melted forward, eyes falling shut. “Riddick...”

He didn’t respond, just kept rubbing his shoulders, working at the muscles, silently. It was almost a sweet thing for a person to do, only Xander knew that Riddick was _seriously_ not a sweet person. More logically, he figured that Riddick was just trying to make sure he was in top condition, so that he wouldn’t be weak in a battle, just in case. Either way, it got him a nice good massage, and it felt amazing. 

“I dreamed of some lady in white.” He murmured, quietly, eyes closed as he leaned forward slightly, to give Riddick more room to work. “She kept calling me Lavelle Alexander.”

“Hm.” He frowned, working his way down the other’s back, rubbing.

“Don’t even know how she knew that was my real name,” he murmured, quietly, tugging one of his knees up to his chest, resting his cheek on his knee. “What a terrible name for a child.”

“Lavelle Alexander?” Riddick repeated.

“Just Xander, thank you,” he murmured, cracking a single eye open to glare at Riddick over his shoulder. “No child should ever have to suffer with the name ‘Lavelle’.”

“Lavelle isn’t a name.” He said, rubbing at the other’s lower back, firmly, massaging his spine. 

“I know, right?” Xander snickered, grinning slightly, shivering a little when Riddick worked at his back. “That’s not a real name. It’s a terrible attempt at a name. A dreadful, dreadful sort of name. I’m glad my mom switched my name so that it was my middle name, because I wouldn’t want to lose out on what my name was, since my birth mother named me that, but... I wouldn’t really want to be called ‘Lavelle’ for the rest of my life.”

“No. Lavelle is not a name.” Riddick stopped rubbing, and just pulled Xander back so that he was laying in his lap, his head resting on his chest. “It’s a title.”

He blinked up at him, confused. “A title.”

“It means heir.” He nodded, resting a hand on Xander’s stomach, almost as though he was laying claim. This was his, no one else fuck with him. “Inheritor. Crown prince.”

Xander snorted, relaxing into Riddick, content. “Yeah right.”

“Heir.” He said calmly. “She didn’t name you Lavelle, she _titled_ you Lavelle. Your only name is Alexander.”

He hesitated, and squirmed back a little to look up at him, brows furrowed. “You are completely serious about this, aren’t you?”

Face as unreadable as ever, Riddick nodded.

Blinking, Xander slumped back into the other’s chest again, stunned. “This doesn’t make any sense.” 

“Why not?”

Fingers curled loosely on the other’s bare stomach, Xander trailed his fingers lightly over the muscles under the skin, considering the sheer power contained below that smooth skin. This man was more powerful than any Slayer he’d ever seen, yet somehow this man was sitting here with him, letting him curl into his chest, warm and keeping him safe. It made him feel like he was somehow important - but he knew he wasn’t, and that’s why it was strange. “Because I can’t be the heir to anything. I’m not an heir, or a crown prince or anything like that. I’m just some guy. Some guy whose mother died, I guess.”

“Who was she?” He ran his fingers through Xander’s curls, lightly. 

“No idea,” he murmured, eyes half lidded.

“Maybe you are Lavelle, then.” He smirked, running his fingers lightly down the other’s spine. At some point, he must have pulled his sweater up to Xander’s shoulders, because he was running his fingers up and down his spine on the bare skin. “My bitch is a crown prince.”

“Oi,” Xander snorted, slapping the other’s stomach. “Not a bitch.”

Riddick twisted one of his curls, and Xander arched, startled, alarmed. “You were saying?” The older man growled lightly in his ear.

“Okay, okay, I’m your bitch! Ow!” 

He released the curls, and leaned back against the wall of the cryo pod, smirking.

Xander groaned, and despite his grumbling, squirmed closer to Riddick, curling into his chest, head on the other’s collarbone. Xander had never really thought of himself as the cuddly type, but it should have made sense. After all, he used to curl up on Willow’s bed and watch old, bad Bollywood movies with the girls. He would let the girls try to stick little ponytails and barrettes in his hair, and whenever he discovered that either of them was alive, he would always run to throw his arms around them, relieved. What surprised him about this was that _Riddick_ was letting him cuddle right up to him. It was sort of strange. He laid his palm against the other’s chest, quietly, and ‘listened’ to the thumping of the other’s heart through his palm. 

“We’re landing soon.”

Blinking, he glanced up at him. “How come? We have cryo... we don’t even need food or anything.”

“We need information.” Riddick half lifted Xander up, and tugged his own sweater off of him, calmly, tossing it aside. 

“You just want to know if the mercs are coming after you,” Xander grinned, and squirmed closer to him, now, sliding his bare arms around Riddick’s neck, reaching up to run his fingers over the other’s bare scalp, lightly stroking his smooth bald skin, feeling it move slightly against his skull. He was fascinated with the other’s head, with the smoothness of his skin. “So when we get there, it’ll be my turn to play the curious little wannabe merc, hm? Ask people what they know?”

He smirked back at him, leaning up to press into the other’s neck, his jaw, snuffling at the scent of his pulse point, nipping at the softer skin. Xander groaned, arching slightly, baring more of his throat to the other man. The hyena instincts that still lurked in the back of his mind always quailed at the idea of baring his throat to anyone, as she had always been an alpha, but it always felt right for him. It was an instinct for him, to bare his throat and open himself up in full vulnerability to the other man, and Riddick had taught him to embrace and trust his instincts. So he bared his neck willingly, even though he knew the other could just tear his throat right out in a heartbeat. 

“Wh-where are we going anyway?” Xander panted, breath catching with every light scrape of the other’s teeth. 

“Lupus Five,” Riddick rumbled against his skin, nipping again at his pulse point.

Shuddering, he held onto Riddick’s head, palms resting against the other’s skull as he did, biting his lip. “I thought that was the m-merc world. Tangiers is there.”

“Yes,” he agreed, biting harder, drawing blood.

Xander bucked, clutching at Riddick. “Wh-why are we going to a merc world? Isn’t the whole p-point of avoiding mercs to stay the hell away from mercs? Or are we just supposed to be - oh... are we going to Lupus Five because that’s the best place to get information on mercs, then?”

“Mmhmm.” 

“You are absolutely insane,” he murmured, lightly scratching at the back of the other’s neck and skull. “You - you are seriously just leaving marks so that none of the mercs will think they have a chance, aren’t you? Leaving all these little marks of ownership so that everyone on this planet will go ‘better not try to sleep with that one, clearly he belongs to someone’, isn’t it? That is exactly what this is.” He groaned slightly, squirming. “You are such a brat.”

Riddick smirked, and nipped at the skin again, licking up the blood.

“God,” Xander groaned softly. “Riddick...”

“Not a god,” he growled against his skin, sliding his hands heavy around Xander’s hips, holding him in place. “Just the Riddick.”

  
 

\---

  
 

The information that Xander was able to get was good.

_Very_ good. 

And also very, very bad.

He was dressed in Riddick’s sweater again, not caring that everyone thought he was some little kid wearing a boyfriend’s sweater - partially because he basically was - because it was warm and comfortable. Hell, it even smelled like Riddick, but that wasn’t really because the other wore it ever, because Xander always did, but because he was usually awfully close to him when he wore it, so he smelled like him too. Still, despite the whole sweater thing, he still looked like he fit in, to an extent. So he filtered through the mercs, trying to glean information where he could.

It was a much longer infiltration than he had expected, but from the amount of UDs that Riddick had given him, the other had expected it. He’d had to pretend to really be someone who wanted to be a merc, which meant meeting up with people and trying to make connections. 

Though mercs were a very suspicious lot by nature, they tended to open up to each other, especially when there was alcohol involved.

So Xander pretended to drink - he’d learned his lesson before, so he didn’t really drink, just pretended to - and he talked to them. And he dropped hints every once in awhile, saying that he’d heard that the bounty for Riddick was still out there, and he was curious about whether anyone had seen him lately, or whether anyone had heard whether or not he’d been captured. A few suggested that they’d heard Johns had gone after him last, but no one seemed to know where in the world Riddick _was_.

“Why do you ask, kid?” One of the mercs at the table asked. 

Xander glanced up at him, smirking slightly. The man was wearing a heavily hooded cape, obscuring most of him, and he wore a half mask across his mouth, like a gas mask of some kind. It reminded Xander of Darth Vader, or Shredder, so as far as he was concerned, this guy was _epic_. “Well, it’s like the biggest bounty in the verse, ain’t it? I’d really like a chunk of change like that.”

One of the other men snorted, and socked Xander in the shoulder. It wasn’t much of a punch, though, as the man beside him was absolutely wasted. “You ain’t even taken a single person down, kid. How the hell are you gonna catch _Riddick_?!”

“Well, he can’t be _that_ bad, can he?”

The drunkard scoffed, and shook his head. “You _really_ don’t know what you’re doin’ yet, kid. Richard B. Riddick is the most difficult bounty. _Ever_.”

“Oh yeah?” he leaned closer, curiously. “Do tell. How come he’s so hard?”

“Well, the man’s like a living weapon of some kind, ain’t he?” He took a swig of what little was left of his drink, pleased to have an audience for his chatter. “He’s stronger and faster and smarter than the average bounty, and he can kill a man with his hands. And every time they catch him and throw him in a slam, he keeps getting _out_.”

Xander smirked. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! You know Butcher Bay, right? I mean, you gotta have heard of it... anyways... he was in there, once.”

“Triple max slam, right?” He asked, leaning his chin in his hand. 

“Not anymore!” He crowed. “It was a triple max slam until Riddick busted his ass outta there and killed the warden, Hoxie. Now it’s just a double max slam!”

Xander blinked, impressed. “Damn. That’s kind of awesome. I didn’t know about that.”

“Yeah, see.” He grinned. “I even heard that he got a merc to help him bust out of there. Johns, I think.”

He whistled. “Wow.”

Shredder scoffed, and turned to the drunkard. “Go on, get yourself another drink, you loser. You’re just repeating old rumours.”

He grumbled, but the drunkard _did_ get up and stumble to the bar.

“So.” Shredder shifted slightly in his seat, leaning back. “Why are you really interested in the Riddick case?”

“Well, like I said. That’s a lot of money. I’d really like that much money.”

“You sure it’s not cause you know where he’s hiding?”

Xander snorted, shifting back in his chair, shaking his head. “That’s ridiculous. Why in the world would I know where Riddick is hiding? The guy’s supposed to be this master of escaping slams and everything, I don’t think there’s any way he would be able to avoid _me_.”

“I doubt he’s avoiding you,” Shredder leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the table, a smirk in his voice. “In fact, I think he’s doing the exact opposite of that.”

“That makes no sense,” he rolled his eyes. “Why the fuck would Riddick _not_ avoid me?”

The man shifted forward again, and pointed at the rather impressive bite mark hickey that Riddick had left on the side of his throat a few days ago. It was fading, now, but it was still clearly visible. Xander hadn’t really quite been able to figure out why his bruises faded quickly usually, within a day or two, but when Riddick bit him, the bruise lasted days longer. Little idiosyncrasy, he supposed. “See, I’ve seen that, and it makes me think that Riddick would be doing anything but avoiding you. I think he gave you that.”

Xander arched a brow. “So you meet some random kid asking about a huge bounty, and your first assumption is that the kid is fucking the bounty? You have a weird way of thinking, buddy.”

“Well, maybe you picked up a passenger. But I doubt it.” He leaned even closer, tugging down his mask, revealing a very familiar face. “Because Riddick always _has_ been a little possessive of you, Xander. How have you boys been doing, lately?”

He froze, fingers curled around the arms of the chair he was sitting in. “ _Johns_.”

“Heya, Xander. Sleeping with the enemy... I’m impressed. I didn’t expect you to do it, especially after your little _show_ with me, but...” He smirked wryly, shaking his head. “I should have known, really. You were always ready to just do whatever the convict told you to do. Figures you were avoiding me because you were seeking out him.”

“I was _not_ ,” he hissed, wide eyed. 

“Of course you weren’t,” Johns sneered. “Where is he?”

“I am _not_ about to tell you,” Xander snapped, standing up. “God dammit, Johns, you tried to rape me, and Riddick saved my ass. Yeah, you know what, I am fucking him. I am completely fucking an escaped convict. And you know what? I’m loyal to the people I’m fucking. So fuck you, Johns. You want to find Riddick, find him yourself. This time, he’ll make sure you’re dead.”

Johns stood, but before he could respond, their old drunkard companion squawked, “You’re fucking _Riddick_?!”

Both of them jumped. Johns hadn’t heard him coming, and Xander’s heartbeat had been pounding so hard in his ears, freaking out about Johns even _being_ there, much less being alive that he hadn’t even realized that he was approaching. God dammit, things were really bad if he hadn’t even noticed that the asshole was coming over. 

“No,” he frowned, running his hand through his hair. “That’s ridiculous. What the hell are you talking about?”

“You said...”

“Yeah,” Johns held out his arms, and turned to face the bar, calling out. “This kid here is fucking the convict Riddick!”

“Johns, what the _hell_?!” Xander hissed.

A few of the mercs around the room turned around curiously, considering him. Xander flushed bright red, feeling a bit like a freak. 

“Well?” Johns held out his hands, smirking. “Come on. You wanted to lie to these nice people? At least tell them the truth of why exactly it is you’re looking for the biggest bounty ever. It’s because you like to bend over and take it from a murderer. A merc killer. You’re a slam bitch for the most wanted man in the verse. And you just walked into a merc bar. You ain’t the smartest kid in the world, Xander.”

Several of the men and women around the bar had turned to look at them. Most of them hadn’t been taking Johns seriously at first, but the more they listened, the more it seemed possible. 

Xander _might_ have been able to walk away from the whole thing, just throw up his hands and leave slowly, but he didn’t expect for the drunkard to grab his arm and yelp, “Well then, we should just take this one in! Bait!”

He hadn’t really ever taken kindly to people grabbing him.

And ever since Riddick had started training him to take care of himself, his reactions to the grabbing had changed a little.

Specifically, Xander snatched his knife out of his belt, and slammed it straight into the base of the man’s throat, into the hollow just above the collarbone. The drunkard sucked in a sharp breath, though by the end of the breath, it bubbled and gurgled with blood, and Xander ripped the blade free. 

The bar was deadly silent and still, as though the whole collective was holding their collective breath, then the drunkard dropped, slamming heavily to the floor.

Xander swallowed, and glanced down at the body. “Oops. Shit. I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

That was like a cue for everyone in the bar to leap to their feet, racing towards him, and Xander yelped, leaping over the table and dashing towards the door. He had to slam at a few more of the mercs as he ran, cutting and slashing as he did, though he was pretty sure he didn’t kill any more of them. If Riddick had been doing this, it would have been elegant and artful and a beautiful thing, but at least Xander was skilled enough now to get the hell out of the bar. 

Once he was free of the door, he was able to break into a real run, just running hard out, as fast as he could, boots ringing hard against the plas-teel floors. Lupus Five was a chemical planet, one where you couldn’t run out into the world itself without protective gear, but inside the massive city that was Tangiers, everything was connected.

People gaped at him as he passed, but Xander didn’t slow, just in case they were still following him, and raced through the halls, until his heart was pounding hard and he could barely breathe, but finally he burst out into the docks. Eternally grateful that he had had the good sense to keep everything he’d brought off the ship with him at all times, just in case, Xander raced across the docks as fast as he could, and dashed into their dry dock, slamming the release button for the large door on the side. He didn’t even wait for the gangplank to lower, just grabbed the edges of the door the second it was open wide enough, and hauled himself up into the ship. He slapped the button to close the door, and howled, “ _Riddick_!” as it slammed shut behind him.

He wasn’t surprised when he heard the engines rumble to life, the floor vibrating under his feet. 

Sucking in a sharp breath, he dashed up into the cabin, and flopped into the co-pilot’s seat, glancing at his companion, who looked displeased as he was cuing the ship to leave. There was a recorded woman’s voice saying that they didn’t have the authorization to leave, but Riddick was clearly ignoring that as he flicked his fingers across the buttons, and their little shuttle left the ground, heading out of the locked city, and into the air beyond.

“You’re going to want to hurry,” Xander breathed, leaning back. “I don’t know if ships are going to try to follow us.”

“What did you do?” He growled.

“I didn’t do anything!” Xander squawked, glancing over at Riddick. “I was doing my job, I was getting information, and thank you, the information looked pretty good, but then someone showed up and went all ‘oh, so you only want to know this information because you’re fucking Riddick, right’? Which, okay, yes, you and I both know that that’s _true_ , and that _is_ the reason why I’m trying to get this information, but still!”

Riddick looked at him sharply, frowning. His expression clearly asked why the hell someone would ask that.

“It was Johns.”

The other man growled, lowly. It was a dangerous sort of sound, like a cornered beast that was trapped and was about to spring out and destroy whatever had it trapped.

“Yeah,” Xander murmured, swallowing. “He’s alive. And pissed as all fuck. I think he kind of wants revenge. On the plus side, I don’t think he actually wants to fuck _me_ anymore, so that’s pretty good. I mean, on one hand, terrible on another, maybe, I guess. But I just kind of want him to stop lusting after my ass.”

“ _My_ ass.” Riddick snarled.

He glanced over at him again. “He’s lusting after your ass? Oh. Well, that would explain a lot, but...”

Riddick let out a low, deep growl. “No. Your ass is mine.”

“ _Oh_.” Xander flushed bright red, squirming a little in his seat, grinning slightly. Tugging his knees up to his chest, his booted heels resting on the edge of the seat, he rested his cheek on his knees, and grinned at the other man. “Aw, and here I thought you were just sort of keeping me around for now because I’m handy. But I can totally handle belonging to someone. I might even like belonging to someone, so long as I’m not _just_ the bitch. Never really had someone _want_ me around before.” He reached over between the chairs to squeeze the other’s shoulder, lightly. “I had this girl I was sort of messing around with, back home, but she didn’t even want to be seen in public with me, so it wasn’t really much of a _relationship_ or anything. I know you’re not really likely to be seen in public with me _either_ , or want to be, but... I dunno, at least you sort of act like you want me around when we’re _alone_ , you know? She sort of just wanted me for my, you know, stunning body.” 

He snorted at that assessment. 

“Oi, you’re the one who just laid claim to this ass,” Xander pointed out, pointing at him. “I seem to have some magical powers of seduction in space, or something. I’m sure I could find someone else who would love to lay claim to this ass.”

Riddick let out another snarl, a vicious sounding growl that seemed to reverberate through the entire ship. 

Xander gaped at him, startled. “...Riddick?”

He just bared his teeth, an almost predatory gesture, then pointed at the weapons console off to the side. “Mercs are coming. Get ready.”

He glanced back at him, confused for a moment, then nodded in understanding, and slid his chair along the metal track it was on to the side console, and started pulling up the instruments, flicking the screens on. “Oh god, there’s like fifteen of them.”

“Kill them all,” Riddick ordered, growling.

  
 

\--- 

  
 

“We’ve taken some serious damage,” Xander murmured, slipping out of his chair. 

Riddick looked up from his controls, frowning slightly. 

“I mean, they’re all dead, but we’ve taken some serious damage, we’re going to have to go somewhere to get a new ship,” He murmured, then abruptly lurched for the back of the ship, to the small bathroom near the back of the ship, throwing himself inside. 

Xander didn’t know why he lost his breakfast in the toilet now, instead of when he was facing down Revas, or when he was climbing in and out of air vents, or when he was posing as a merc, or when he had to face down Johns again, or even while they were shooting out mercs in their ships. All he knew was that his stomach was trying to exit his body through his throat, and that it hurt. A lot. 

Resting his forehead against the cold metal of the toilet, Xander closed his eyes, and swallowed. “Fuck.”

“Are you injured?” Riddick crouched beside him, resting his hand on the other’s shoulder-blades. 

“No... I almost wish I was, so I could explain this.” Xander groaned, glancing up at him, then winced and put his forehead back on the metal again, swallowing. His stomach was seriously rebelling. “I should probably come up with a reason for why this is happening, I really should, but right at this moment, I just sort of want to curl up in a bed or a cryo pod if I really have to, and try to figure out what the hell is wrong with the universe right now.”

“Tell me,” he curled his fingers on the teenager’s back.

“I will.” He held up a hand. “When I feel less disgusting. Okay? I promise. I’ll tell you soon.”

“Hn.” Riddick straightened and stood, heading out of the small bathroom.

“Lovely. I pissed off the Riddick.” He groaned, slumping slightly. He knew that the man didn’t really have the patience for bullshit or for a kid trying to figure out what in the world he should say about whatever was going on. He shifted slightly, leaning back against the wall, then glanced up, surprised, when Riddick handed him a bottle of water. “Um. Thanks.”

He nodded, and left the little room. 

“Huh,” Xander murmured, sipping at the water. “Thanks.”  
  
[A Mad Tea-Party](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/48208.html)  


 

  



	8. White Rabbit - A Mad Tea-Party

  


**White Rabbit - A Mad Tea-Party**

  


  


“Dammit, I hate this.” 

Xander ducked under the lift in the little garage, hooking his thumbs in his pockets as he headed towards the back, where the roof rose dramatically, providing the space necessary for the repair of space ships. In this case, it was their own space ship in the back, and Xander would have much rather’d they just stole another ship, but apparently this particular sector of space didn’t have a lot of ships around _for_ someone to steal. 

So the damage the mercs had caused when they’d chased them from Lupus Five had to be repaired, instead of just getting a shiny new ship. 

The mechanic climbed up out of a repair pit that was beneath the ship, pushing the welding mask back off her face, and looked up at him. She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, smearing oil across her cheekbone. “Sorry it’s taking so long, but seriously, I’m moving as fast as I can.”

“Oh, yeah, I know that.” He coughed, and settled on the corner of the welder. “No worries, it’s just... you know... stuck in the middle of nowhere, not able to run...”

“Yeah, a lot of people like getting the hell out of this colony,” She sighed, shaking out her hair, which was all tight little braids pulled back into a loose ponytail. “The longer I stay around this place, the more people try to run. And before you suggest that it’s my fault...” she pointed at him. “Without me here to fix up their piece of shit birds, none of them would be leaving.”

Xander laughed softly, and grinned up at her. “Makes it seem like you should tamper with their engines a little so that you don’t lose your customer base.”

She grinned at him. “I’ll have to remember that. So if your bird don’t leave the ground, you’ll know why. So. They call me Nina. What do I call you?”

“Xander,” he smirked slightly, offering his hand. “Nice to meet you, Nina.” 

“Mutual, I’m sure.” She snickered, shaking his hand, firmly. “So what’re you doing here, other than getting your bird all fixed up? Headed to one of the colonies?”

“Naw... we’re just exploring.”

“We?” She frowned, then nodded. “Ah, your bald friend. Haven’t seen much of him, actually. He like avoiding people?”

“Yeah, sort of,” he considered that, kicking his feet lightly. “He’s not really a people person, you know? Not like me, I totally like hanging around with people, I’m a total people person. I like _talking_ to people. It’s nice. Makes me feel like I’ve got some purpose for being out here in the verse, I guess. So it’s nice to talk. I do enough talking for me and my friend both.”

“What’s his name?” she asked, scooping up a wrench, and getting to work on the engine almost directly beside them.

“...Richard.” He said at last. It was _technically_ true.

“He doesn’t look much like a Richard.” she snorted, grunting as she got right into the engine itself, working at it. “Dunno what he looks like, but it sure as hell isn’t a _Richard_.”

“Sorry, that’s his name.” He shrugged. “Honest to god truth.”

“Honest to which god?” Nina grinned at him, and frowned. “Can you hand me that spanner, there?”

“This one here?” Xander bent to pick it up.

She nodded.

“Here,” he handed it over, smiling slightly. “A spanner, heh. Like that word. And I dunno which god I’m supposed to be honest to, now. Not really. There are a whole bunch on my planet, and the way I hear it, there are probably less gods out here in space than there are on that stupid little planet alone.”

“Why, what planet?” Nina frowned.

Xander cleared his throat. “Earth.”

She cackled, glancing at him over her shoulder again. “Oh, _very_ nice. You’re from _the_ backwoods planet. No wonder you’ve got so many gods. Even the Christ-ers think that Earth is weird.”

“Thanks,” he rolled his eyes.

Nina snickered, and kept working at the engine for a few minutes as they kept up an idle chattering conversation, random bits and pieces of talk that didn’t really amount to anything other than a pleasant conversation. A couple hours later, as she finally set her tools aside in her tool box, Nina glanced over at him and asked, “So... you doing anything tonight?”

“Hm. Not that I know of.”

“Wanna go grab a drink?” She grinned, stepping closer to him.

Xander blinked at her for a moment, then cleared his throat, and patted her arm lightly. “Um. That is a very tempting suggestion. And I probably would love to do that. But I think there is more of a chance that Richard would kill me.”

“Why would - _ah_.” Nina smirked slightly, and patted his arm in response. “Gotcha. Well, at least you’re probably a hot couple.”

He snorted, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “On the other hand, I told him that I had magical seductive powers in space, I was totally right. I really could get - “

For the sake of not getting slapped, it was probably a good thing that Xander never actually got a chance to tell her what he thought he could really get, but before he could finish his awkward statement, there was gunfire outside the shop, and he twisted, immediately, running towards the door. Nina followed him, started by the sound, but Xander didn’t even pay attention. With his lifestyle, gunfire usually meant something _bad_. 

He dashed outside, and froze. 

He couldn’t quite puzzle out what was going on, but the circumstances now were fairly clear. Johns was standing in the street, wearing a Marshall’s uniform, which didn’t really make sense as he was one of the least legal minded persons he’d ever seen, and he had a pair of cuffs locked on Riddick, who looked like he was about to rip Johns’ head off. Before them, a little piece away, there was a little girl lying on the ground in the middle of a growing puddle of blood, her blond curls fanning out in her own blood. 

For a moment, Xander had to swallow down bile. All he could see, looking at that, was Lynn, slumped on the elevator. 

There was a growl, and Xander glanced at Riddick where he was kneeling on the ground. He didn’t speak, and though he didn’t tell him this, Xander knew that he didn’t want to draw Johns' attention to the fact that Xander was there. Riddick was sort of possessive, and while Xander knew he wouldn’t want to have him somewhere where he couldn’t protect him, he _really_ wouldn’t want Johns to get his hands on him. 

Xander ducked back into the shadows, swallowing. 

“What is going on?!” Nina demanded, starting forward, yelping when he caught her elbow, jerking her back. “Why has that Marshall got your friend?!”

“He’s not a Marshall,” he murmured, barely audibly. “He’s just a merc.”

“A mercenary?”She demanded, looking displeased. “Well, why is he taking your friend, then? What did he do? What did your friend _do_ that he’s taking him in?”

Xander licked his lips. “How would a person get off this planet?”

“Xander,” Nina said sternly, “What did he do?”

“How would a person get off this planet?” He repeated. “If a mercenary was trying to his bounty off of this planet, and out towards somewhere else, how would he do that?”

There was a flurry of activity in the street as Johns hauled Riddick to his feet, moving him away from the street corner and towards the ports, hauling him along with a gun pressed into the back of his neck. A woman pushed through the crowed, howling out as she dropped to her knees beside the little girl, wailing as she scooped her up, holding her close. Xander winced at the sound of her howls, pressing his hand to his stomach as he swallowed down another wave of bile, watching the men moving away, instead. “Nina,” he said again. “ _How_.”

“Either he’d have his own ship, or he could take one of the colonist transports, there is usually one getting ready to leave, I think the Hunter-Gratzner is hiring passengers, but Xander, a little girl is dead and a merc has your friend and _dammit_ , what did he _do_?”

“Nothing. This time.” He swallowed hard, and looked up at her. “Hunter-Gratzner. Colony ship, taking passengers in cryo?”

She sighed heavily. “About to leave for a twenty-six month trip. But seriously. Xander. What did he _do_? Who is he? What did your friend do, that a kid gets killed and you start freaking out about where they might be going?”

“The merc’s named Johns. My friend is Riddick.”

Nina’s eyes widened dramatically, until there was white all around her pupils. “ _Riddick_? _The_ Riddick?! Your friend is the mother fucking Riddick?!”

“Look, I need to get a couple things off of my ship, then, ah... you can have it.” He glanced back at her. “Consider it pay for the work you have done, so far. Sorry to bail it here, but... I gotta go. Sorry, Nina, you’re a nice girl and all, but... I gotta go rescue him.”

“Rescue - you’re going to rescue the _Riddick_?!” she hissed, following him into her garage, eyes wide. “That’s - that’s suicide!”

“Baby, you’re talking to the guy that’s fucking Riddick. Trust me when I say that I sort of face suicide every day.” He headed up to the ship, hitting the controls so that he could climb up into it, heading inside to get some of the weapons they’d left behind. He wasn’t sure if Riddick had taken his ulaks with him or not, but if he hadn’t, Xander was going to get them for him. He wasn’t sure if he hoped he had them or if he hoped he’d left them, not really. But it gave him something to focus on, something that wasn’t his own buzzing thoughts. 

“You’re seriously going to do this,” Nina gaped at him as he found that Riddick _didn’t_ have the ulaks, and strapped them to his belt. “You’re going to go track down a merc who has _the Riddick_ and _save_ him.”

Xander glanced back at her. “Yeah. I am.”

“ _Why_?!”

He hesitated, frowning slightly. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You _love_ this guy?!”

“Oh god no,” Xander snorted, scooping up his knife, and shoving it into his boot. “I don’t love him. Half the time I can’t stand him. But I do sort of like keeping him around, know what I mean? So... yeah. I gotta go save him.”

She hesitated, then held up a hand. “Okay, wait a second, I got something, um...” 

Nina darted out of the ship, and ran down the gangplank. As Xander emerged from the ship a few minutes later, she offered him a small leather bag, smiling hopefully. “It’s not much, but....”

He dug in the bag, curiously, and blinked at what he pulled out. 

It was a knife, fairly small, but it had a wide blade that was viciously curved. He weighed it in his palm, surprised at the weight of it, really. “This is for me?”

“I got it years ago... it’s just going to waste,” Nina shrugged, clearing her throat. “If it’ll help you save your man, then.... well... it’s useful, right?”

“...thanks,” he smirked slightly, then impulsively hugged her. 

“Good luck, Xander,” she murmured.

“Oh believe me, I am _so_ going to need it,” he groaned.

\---

  
 

The Hunter-Gratzner was a much larger ship than Xander had expected. 

He paid his way on board, packed his luggage - which yes, was all weapons - into the little compartment below the cryo pod the captain told him was going to be his, and crept through the ship itself, considering everything. There was some very interesting things in the hold, including a massive Egyptian sarcophagus. How the hell had someone in space gotten something from _Earth_? He thought it was supposed to be super back woods and everyone avoided it.

He hid in the shadows when Johns hustled Riddick onto the ship. 

Mostly, he didn’t want Johns to know that he was there, because if he did, he was likely to end up dead, or the victim of some other unpleasantness. So he hid in the darkness, quietly, and was pleased to see that his cryo pod was only two further down the line from the ones Johns tossed his own gear under. He would have to make sure to wait until Johns had gotten to sleep before he slipped into his own, just to make sure that the merc didn’t see him, but that wasn’t so bad. 

Riddick knew he was there.

He didn’t know _how_ Riddick knew that he was there, because he was blindfolded and gagged and chained up - literally - and he shouldn’t have been able to figure out he was there. It wasn’t like Xander could see his companion’s eyes, to see that he knew he was there, or anything, but it was like there was a shift in the air when Riddick’s head shifted slightly, like he was looking at him without actually doing so. 

Riddick growled slightly, and Xander returned the sound, soft as he could manage in the silence of the ship. He knew that the other wanted him to get the _hell_ off of the ship and go somewhere where Johns couldn’t find him. He also knew that he wasn’t going to do that.

He _had_ to rescue Riddick. It was kind of hard for him to explain to the other man _why_ , but it was a simple matter of figuring out how to explain it.

Well, to himself, as much as to Riddick. That was part of the problem.

He didn’t even know how to explain it to himself.

“I _got_ you, you son of a bitch,” Johns said smugly, as he shoved Riddick into the pod on the end of the unit. It was marked with large warnings about how dangerous the inhabitant was, and how he wasn’t to be allowed out under circumstances. “I am going to make you _pay_ for what you did to me, you bastard.”

Riddick lifted his chin, and smirked a little despite the bit in his mouth. 

“You smug bastard,” Johns punched Riddick in the jaw, and shoved him further back into the cryo pod, violently. It was like he wanted to take out his anger over what had happened with Xander, and the stabbing itself, out on Riddick specifically because Riddick was now helpless. 

As far as Xander was concerned, it was a dick move.

He did finally lock Riddick into the cryo pod, however, once the captain emerged from the cabin and told him that they’d be leaving in the next few minutes. He slammed the door shut, smirking slightly as it locked, and the cryo cycle started. 

Xander waited until the captain had locked Johns into his before slipping out of the shadows. 

Padding lightly up to the larger than usual cryo pod, Xander lay his hand flat against the glass. He looked up at the face of the man he had an almost undefinable sort of relationship with, still so full of defiance and anger despite the blindfold and the bit gag, and smiled faintly. “I know you can hear me,” he murmured, quietly. “At least I’m pretty damn sure that you can. You’ve always been able to hear everything that happens when you’re in cryo. And look, I know that you want me to get the hell out of here, and let you deal with this in your own time and stuff, but... this is a twenty-six month trip, Riddick. Twenty-six months. That’s longer than two years, in space time. There’s some stuff that we _really_ need to talk about, and... more than two years time is _not_ going to make it easier to talk about. So, ah... sleep tight, I guess. I’ll see you at New Mecca when we get there, okay?”

“Xander?” A voice called, and he turned to see one of the crew standing in the doorway, frowning. She had her short blond hair half tugged back in a ponytail, though it wasn’t much of a ponytail, not really. She looked displeased, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the stress of getting them started on their voyage, or because he was standing in front of the convict’s cryo pod. “...what are you doing?”

“Sweet dreams,” Xander said quickly, lightly, then tugged his hand down off the glass and headed over to the woman. “Hey. Sorry, just looking, I guess.”

“That’s not safe,” she said, frowning. “You really need to stay away from him.”

“What, he’s sleeping, isn’t he?” Xander grinned, innocently. “I wouldn’t think that anything’s gonna happen to him, not really, or to me just because I went near him. Or is he that strong of a murderer that he could, like, bust out of his cryo pod and kill me?”

She stepped closer, glancing at Riddick over Xander’s shoulder. “No. But he’s dangerous. So just do everyone and yourself a favour and listen to directions, all right?”

“Just figured I’d see who else we’re travelling with,” he shrugged. 

“You won’t really see them,” she snorted, and patted his shoulder. “You’ll be sleeping the whole time, remember? Twenty six months of sleep. Might be relaxing.”

“Relaxing?” Xander crinkled his nose. “I hate cryo. I don’t think it’ll be relaxing.”

“You hate cryo?” She laughed softly, amused. “What, because it makes you nervous? Lots of people get nervous about going into cryo, it’s nothing to be scared of. Not really. It’s just going to sleep, and waking up in just over two years, and you won’t even remember sleeping.”

“Hm? No way. I dream in cryo.” He glanced at Riddick, thinking, _He dreams in cryo, too_.

“You dream in cryo?” She blinked at him. “...seriously?”

“Yeah, every time I go into cryo, I dream. I dream of being on the same planet every time, even though I’ve never been there. It’s a nice world, though, dunno why I dream about it. I sort of hope I’ll see it soon. But until I do... guess I’ll just have to dream about it in cryo.”

“I’ve never heard of that,” she said, frowning.

“Yeah, and now you know why I hate it,” he smirked, and headed over to his pod, opening it reluctantly, and stepping in. He knew it was time to go to sleep, otherwise she probably wouldn’t be here - and neither would the several other people stepping into the passenger cabin, chattering among themselves. A tall man followed by three eagerly gossiping boys, a short girl with her hair cropped short, a laughing couple. There were others behind them, but these led the charge, apparently. “Gonna put me to sleep, Miss Fry?”

She looked at him sharply, startled, and he tapped his own left collarbone. “Your name is on your jacket.”

“Right,” she flushed slightly, and stepped forward quickly, as though trying to brush over her being flustered with bravado. “Ready?”

Xander sighed, and leaned back in the pod, buckling himself in with the strap across his chest. “Not really. But you’d better put me to sleep anyway. See you in a couple years, huh?”

Fry snorted, and closed the door.

He smirked slightly, and closed his eyes, letting the chemical sleep wash over him.

  
 

\---

  
 

Gripping the muscled neck tightly in his arms, he snapped the head, the sickening crack of breaking vertebrae and snapping tendons filled the small space of the cave. He released his arms, and the animal dropped to the stone floor, lifeless.

Xander grinned, pleased, and dropped beside it, tugging his knife out to slash the throat itself open, letting the blood pour out into a large stone bowl. 

Once the blood stopped flowing so quickly, he shifted the large feline over a smaller bowl to catch the last little bit of the blood, and dipped his fingers into the bowl, licking them clean. The blood was hot and iron rich, steaming the air of the small cave, like a freshly prepared meal, and just as tempting. Still, he had a purpose for it _other_ than just drinking, and he lifted the bowl, heading to the curved wall. 

Dipping his fingers in the bowl, Xander began to draw on the walls. It wasn’t a particularly _good_ drawing, but he was trying to explain his story, what the _hell_ had happened and how he’d gotten there. If he’d had paper and a pen, he would have been writing that way. But in lieu of that, blood on a stone wall would have to do.

He _was_ having a hard time resisting the urge to lick blood off his fingers, though.

“Shame there’s no blue blood,” Xander grinned. “To do Riddick’s eyes right. Hm. Well, I could use blueberries or something, if I could find them, but... well, we’ll see.”

“Paint might work,” another voice said lightly, and Xander spun like a kid caught with his fingers in a candy jar, startled. It probably didn’t help that he had two bloody fingers in his mouth, and he tugged them out, quickly, trying to pretend he _wasn’t_ licking them clean of blood. “Hello, Lavelle.”

He blinked. “Aereon. You’re... in my dreams again. And still not just calling me Xander. Hi. Um. Why are you in my dreams again?”

“You were expecting the Riddick, perhaps?”She drifted towards him, feet still not quite touching the floor. “I heard a rumour that there is a line up of people who want to get into _his_ dreams. Thus far, I seem to be the only one who realizes that your dreams are also worth entering. How are you faring, Lavelle?”

“Xander,” he said again, and set the bowl of blood down, kicking the jaguar/hyena thing to the side, so that the cave looked a little less like a primitive caveman’s wet dream. “And I’m doing okay. It’s been a _very_ long time, though. These dreams kinda suck, sometimes. I mean, isn’t the point of dreams that time goes all wonky in them? I swear I’ve been wandering around in this world for years.”

“You have,” she said lightly. “Twenty two months.”

“Well, damn, no wonder I’ve managed to draw my entire life story.” He snorted, glancing up at the walls. “Hm. So what can I do for you, Aereon? What secrets does my noggin hold, that you need to get into my dreams to talk to me?”

Aereon settled on a large rock, sitting lightly, smiling that Mona Lisa smile of hers. “What makes you think your head contains secrets, Lavelle?”

“ _Xander_.” He sat on a fairly sizable pile of furs in the corner of the cave. It was his bed, and every time he killed another animal for food or for ‘paint’, he added the pelt to the stack. It was getting _extremely_ comfortable, now. “If you really need to call me Lavelle, then call me Lavelle Xander, or something. Riddick told me what that means, by the way. He says that Lavelle means heir, or crown prince. Was he right? Is that really what that name means?”

She smirked slightly, looking remarkably pleased with herself, and nodded. “Yes, Lavelle Alexander, that is what that means. It means that you are an heir.”

“Cool.” he considered that for a moment, staring off into space. “What am I an heir _of_?”

“Something that no longer exists.”

“...dammit, I finally get to be something cool, and the thing that I am supposed to inherit doesn’t even _exist_ anymore?” Xander threw up his hands. “Figures. You know, if I was Buffy, instead of me, it would be some kick ass legacy, or something, not something that’s been destroyed for like ever. That is _exactly_ my luck.”

Aereon stood from the stone, moving over to sit lightly beside him on the furs, reaching out to lightly touch Xander’s hair. “That is not to say, Lavelle Alexander, that it will never exist again.”

Xander blinked up at her, a little confused. “Wait, what?”

“Just because a thing no longer exists does not mean that it will never exist again,” she said lightly, folding her hands in her lap. She looked out of place in the cave, but calm about the fact that she was there. It didn’t even make sense that she could slip into his dreams, but there they were. She was there, sitting in the cave he had for some reason created in his dreams as his home. “You are still Lavelle. One day the verse may know what you are Lavelle of.”

He blinked at her. “...can we not talk about how I’m called a Lavelle anymore? Just call me Xander.”

Aereon smiled lightly, and touched his head again, lightly. “Have you figured it out, yet? Have you divined what my message meant, yet?”

“About carrying the hope of the verse with me?” He hesitated. “No. Not exactly. I mean, I think I’ve figured out part of it. But, ah... not most of it. I don’t get how in the world this is supposed to save the verse. I don’t even get how this has happened. I really don’t. But I definitely don’t know how that’s supposed to save the verse.”

“I don’t expect you to know that,” she smiled lightly, brushing his curls back. “That is not what you need to know now.”

“I know. I have to worry about carrying the future.” He cleared his throat. “I’m completely freaked out about that, by the way.”

Aereon just smiled. 

“And, _and_ , I still haven’t figured out how the fuck I’m supposed to tell Riddick that I’m following him and that I’m not just doing it cause he’s great in bed or something. He is, though, you know. _Really_ great in bed. I mean... um... not that that’s probably the kind of thing you want to hear about, but, um... it’s true. He’s pretty friggin’ amazing.”

“You’re right, that’s not entirely what I wished to hear,” she said lightly, frowning slightly. But she looked slightly mischievous, still. Like a naughty grandma who liked to act all perfectly prim and proper, but who took an almost perverse pleasure in meddling in the lives - and sometimes sex lives - of her grandchildren. 

And Xander, apparently, was an honorary grandchild. 

“Are you going to be ready?”

He groaned, slumping back onto the furs, staring up at the ceiling. “No. Absolutely not. Not a chance. I will never be ready for whatever the fuck this is. Did you know that our hearts _beat the same_ now? I’m serious. I’ve checked. Whenever I’m around him, our heart beats are the same. Hell, they might even be the same right now, whatever he’s dreaming about in wherever he dreams. How come he doesn’t hang out in my dreams like you do? That seems like it’s not fair.”

Aereon smiled enigmatically. “I have told you, many people wish to speak to him in his dreams.”

“Yeah, like me.” He rolled his eyes.

“You will see him soon,” She said lightly. “Very soon. Do try to be careful.”

He crinkled his nose. “...why? What are we going to do?”

“You’ll see soon.” Aereon shifted to stand, and looked down at him, for a moment, just considering him. “Be careful to not be a hero, Lavelle Alexander, and trust that the Riddick can take care of himself.”

“...sure,” he blinked, then bolted up, eyes wide as the furs suddenly shook hard beneath him. “Woah! What happened?!”

Aereon was gone, so naturally she didn’t give him an answer. 

He stood, alarmed, then yelped when the cave shook around him again, the bowl of blood falling off the ledge and spilling all over the floor. “Shit, earthquake, or - _ship_. The _ship_ is shaking, what’s - “

Xander’s forehead cracked off the glass of his cryo pod, and he slammed back into the ‘mattress’ again. 

Sucking in a sharp breath, he opened his eyes again, glowering at the spider-webbing break pattern he’d managed to bust into the glass with his forehead. There was blood on the glass, but that was the least of his concern - he was more alarmed by the chaos going on around him. 

Alarms were wailing, and the other passengers in their pods were being rattled around like balls in a pinball machine, slammed off the sides and the glass, though they all slept still. 

He struggled out of the strap that held him down in the pod, and shifted, just using his arms to hold himself in, trying to see to Riddick’s pod. He didn’t know if the other man had woken yet, or not. He knew Riddick usually woke before him, but maybe he hadn’t had some creepy mysterious lady in his dreams telling him what to do, or that something was coming. The other, still gagged and blindfolded, dammit, was rattling around in his cage as much as Xander and the other’s were, too, but there was a stiffness to Riddick’s shoulders that told him that the other _was_ awake - he just couldn’t move.

There was a wrenching sound, then the whole ship shifted violently. Light suddenly flooded the cabin as the wall suddenly disappeared. The pods closest to the end flew out into the bright sky, skimming out into the clouds, and disappearing. 

Xander braced himself, sensing that impact was imminent, and sure enough, a few seconds later, the Hunter-Gratzner slammed to the earth.

There was screaming. 

Someone was howling in pain, and several other people were struggling in their pods, moving as they tried to find out what was going on. He could see Fry stumbling out of the cabin, wild-eyed and pale, but Xander knew that he had to get out of here, and he had to get out _now._

Xander threw his weight against the door, slamming it open so that it actually smashed off of the front of someone else’s pod, shattering the glass in both of their doors. If he’d known that there _was_ an emergency release, he would have used that.

Stumbling out of the pod, unsteady on his feet, Xander darted to the one cryo pod off by itself, struggling with the door and the lock on it. It was harder than he expected, and he couldn’t quite get it - and when he saw Johns’ cryo pod door open, he swore, and ducked out of sight. Fortunately, the bounty hunter just checked the door, to make sure it was locked, then stumbled to the cabin, to find the captain.

Relieved, Xander darted back to Riddick’s pod, and drove a chuck of scrap metal that had once been part of the ship’s hulls straight into the lock itself. It shattered the interior workings of the lock, and he jerked the door open, quickly.

“What are you doing?” a young voice cried, and he didn’t have to look up to know that it was the girl with the short hair. “They said he’s dangerous!”

“He is,” he answered, and shoved another small piece of metal into the lock of the left cuff, breaking it open. 

The moment his left hand was free, Riddick reached up to rip the blindfold off, then shifted to jerk the bit out of his mouth, as well. His eyes were still closed, though, squeezed tightly shut against the fiery bright light that was spilling into the cabin from outside. “Goggles,” he growled.

“Got ‘em,” Xander held up the pair he’d brought with them. They weren’t really the right ones, the right ones were hooked on Johns belt right now, but they were goggles, at least, and at least they would keep him from being blinded by the all-too-bright light pouring in around them. He stood on his tip toes, and slid them onto Riddick, tugging them down until they covered the other man’s eyes, and he grinned in relief, figuring that he would open his eyes again once they were covered. “There we go. Much better.”

He glowered at him, but hooked his arm around Xander’s neck, and hauled him along with him as he left the pod, regarding their environment. The chains were still hooked around the other’s feet, his neck, his hands, but at least he had _use_ of them again, and Xander had great faith in his ability to find a cutting torch.

“Great to see you too,” he coughed, stumbling along with them.

The girl watched them as they moved out of the cryo cabin, but they both ignored her. They had their attention on something far worse - where most of the ship had been before was... well... _nothing_. The bright fiery light that had been spilling into the cabin was apparently coming from what used to be the storage bay and additional passenger space, which was now just a wide, open sandy field. 

Xander gaped at the desert in front of them, eyes narrowed at the brightness, stunned. “ _Shit_ ,” he murmured.

“Too bright.” Riddick agreed, shielding his eyes, even with the goggles on. “We need to stay inside until we find a way out of here.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, hesitating, then offered, “What’s left of the storage bay?”

Riddick nodded, and lead the way.

They found a small space in the rafters, of all places. It didn’t seem like the safest place, not really, but it reminded Xander of that time they’d hid from Revas, and it seemed sort of fitting, considering they were sort of hiding from Johns right now. Sitting curled up on the metal beams, Xander grinned at the other man, pleased. It was funny, because physically, it felt like they’d only been apart for a couple days. Mentally, he could feel all of the twenty two months they’d been separated, and he wanted nothing more than to curl up in the other’s lap and forget that all of the shit around them was even going on. 

Except that Riddick didn’t _exactly_ seem happy to see him.

“Right. You’re pissed, huh?”

“You followed,” he growled, his jaw set hard. 

“...yeah.” Xander cleared his throat. “I know. I kind of did that on purpose. I mean, you rescue me _all the time_. So I rescued you. Or... I’m rescuing you, I guess. Currently rescuing you.”

He snarled. 

“...okay, seriously, does my rescuing you piss you off that much?” He winced. “I didn’t realize I was _that_ frustrating...”

“Shut up,” he snapped.

Xander sighed, and leaned back against a convenient hunk of metal, disappointed. He wasn’t really sure what he’d been suspecting, not really, other than maybe some ‘thank god you rescued me’ sex or at least a half hearted thanks, or something. He knew they weren’t exactly having what you could call a story book romance or anything, but he kinda figured he was worth _something_.

“If I have to save you _again_ because you chose to follow...” Riddick said firmly. 

“...I’ll try not to require rescuing.”

He snorted, but abruptly reached across the little space they were in, tugging Xander against his chest, and kissed him firmly.

“Mm.” Xander melted into the kiss, pleased.

Until he heard the shifting of someone coming into the hold, and they both froze, before Riddick twisted away, shifting up onto his feet on the metal beam, ready to leap down and strike.

_Johns_.

“Fuck,” Xander mouthed, displeased.

Riddick crouched, and Johns passed under them, the barrel of the gun sweeping over the space in front of them as he moved forward, searching for Riddick among the wreckage. The convict dropped down out of the roof, landing on Johns and slamming the heel of his hand into the other’s temple. 

Johns bucked for a moment, then slammed the gun back, the butt of the handle slamming into Riddick’s face, then twisted to crack him with the stock. 

Xander figured the crash must have stunned Riddick more than he had expected, because he actually fell back, and another hit made him fall actually to the floor. Johns scrambled back to him, grabbing the cuff that was on Riddick’s left wrist, then dragged him over to a massive post in the middle of the room, cuffing him to the pole itself. He raised his hand to rain another blow down on him, but Xander wasn’t about to let that happen. Consequences be damned.

Besides, he never really had been good at thinking first before he did things.

He leapt out of the rafters, landing on top of the bounty hunter, and grabbed his arm, wrenching it back. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ , Johns.”

“Should have fucking _known_ ,” the man snarled, shoving at him.

“Don’t fuck with my bitch, Johns,” Riddick growled, smirking. “He’s learned well, and he will _fuck you up_.”

Xander grinned, only wishing he had a knife with him so that he could stab the bounty hunter’s smug face. “Believe me, Johns, I really will. And guess what. I’d do it with great joy. I’d take _real_ pleasure from doing it, and I don’t care how serial killery that makes me sound.”

“Marshall?” Fry leaned in the door, and blinked at them, surprised. “...you caught him.”

“You sound disappointed,” Johns glanced briefly at Xander, as though daring him to make trouble now that there were witnesses, and stepped forward. “Have we gathered the survivors?”

She nodded, hesitating as she considered the three of them. “Yeah.”

“Come on, Xander,” Johns clapped his hand on the teenager’s shoulder, grinning almost maliciously. “Let’s go help them. The prisoner will keep out here by himself.”

Xander winced. “Yeah. He will.”

_You son of a bitch_.

  
 

\---

  
 

Antsy and jittery, Xander still felt like he was trying to slough off the haze that cryo had left on him. He’d been fuzzy even when he clambered out of the pod, and ever since he just didn’t quite feel right.It was like his body had kick-started and was already running frantically forward, but his brain hadn’t quite caught up with him yet.

He wasn’t sure if it was the planet and the lack of air. Maybe it was seeing that crewman, Owens or whatever they called him, die. Maybe it was Johns, being his old pleasant self.

He didn’t know.

He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

Running his hand through his hair, he glanced down at the shadow he seemed to have developed. The kid followed him everywhere he went about the wreckage, as he reluctantly helped look for water or food or salvageable equipment. He was happy to help, really, he’d always been the kind of guy that loved to help and make himself feel useful. Were the circumstances any different, he would have been delighted to be carting stuff and hefting supplies. Right now, though, he wanted nothing more than to be in the hold, with Riddick. Even if Riddick didn’t want to talk or really do anything but glower at him for being dumb enough to follow him, he’d still have been happy to be somewhere with someone he didn’t feel the overwhelming desire to stab right about now.

Johns was strutting around like a proud cock of the walk, and he _really_ wanted to wipe that smug smirk off of his face.

With a bladed weapon, if possible.

“Can I help you with something, kiddo?” Xander glanced at the girl again, and sat on the edge of what used to be a cryo pod.

She darted over to sit beside him, grinning up at him eagerly, like he was the holder of some great secret she’d been looking for. “You know Riddick, right?”

Xander hesitated. “Yeah.”

Know Riddick? Sure, in the Biblical sense.

Understand him? Fuck no.

Her eyes lit up. “Tell me about him?”

Xander hesitated again, breath catching slightly. She was younger and slightly smaller, self-shorn hair a shaggy mess instead of long and pin straight, but the bright eyed eager-for-knowledge look the girl gave him was exactly like Willow’s eager puppy eyes. Willow’s look had always melted his heart. This kid’s did mostly the same.

“...what do you want to know?”

She shifted closer. “Is it true that he’s killed a hundred people?”

He snorted. “A _hundred_? Probably not. But he’s killed a lot, though. Dozens, at least.”

“And he’s escaped from prison, too?”

“At least two I know of,” He nodded. “Riddick doesn’t like being caged up.”

“So he must hate being tied up down there.”

A frown flitted across Xander’s face. “Yeah. I hate it too.”

“How come you know him?” She shifted back on the makeshift bench. The girl was struggling to look more masculine than she did already, which was the moment when he realized that she was _trying_ to look like a boy, rather than just sort of happening to look like one. _Well_. “Are you a criminal, too?”

“If you ask Johns I probably am,” he sighed slightly.

“Wow, _really_?” She gaped up at him with clear adoration. It was kind of creepy. “Have you killed people too?”

“Uh... that’s a little morbid, kiddo,” he blinked at her. “What do I call you, anyway?”

“Jack.” She said, confidently. “Jack B. Badd.”

“...really?”

She nodded, fervently.

“Right. Jack.” He offered his hand. “I’m Xander.”

Jack shook his hand harder than most kids would have. He was pretty sure she was just trying to be ‘tough’. “Hi, Xander.”

“So, ah...” he lowered his voice a little, still avoiding her question. “Was I supposed to think you were a boy?”

A horrified look crossed her face. 

“Or... not?”

“How did you know?!” She hissed. “How did you know I’m not... you know... a _boy_?!”

“ _Oh_.” Xander blinked at her, surprised. “You smell like a girl.”

Jack blinked at him, face still pale, eyes still wide. “I smell like a girl. Did you seriously just say that I _smell_ like a _girl_?”

He hesitated. “Uh... yeah.”

She gaped at him, jaw hanging.

“Jack, that’s really creepy.” He said firmly, squirming under the scrutiny. He liked being in the centre of attention, sure, but this intense gaping was really starting to get to him. “Look, I have this thing where I really recognize smells and sounds and stuff, and you smell like - okay, that look is really freaking me out - augh, look, Riddick does it too, so it’s not weird, okay, it’s totally completely weird, but still! He does it too! No freaking out!”

“...he does it too?” She asked, suspiciously. 

“Yeah! Who do you think taught me to do it?” he said quickly, flushed. “Yeah, he does it too.”

“Oh.” Jack considered that. “...okay.”

Xander rolled his eyes. The way she said that, it was like he’d been given permission to be a strange sort of person who smelled people. He wasn’t sure if that was worse or better. “Just think of it like I’m some kick ass hunter or something. I’m like Wolverine without the claws.”

“What’s a - “

“I don’t know what the hell a wolverine even is, so don’t even ask what one is. There’s just this guy called Wolverine that is really cool, that’s all.”

She considered that, then shrugged. “So does that make you John’s prisoner, too?”

“Not anymore,” he smirked.

“You _were_?” she gaped at him, eyes lighting up. It was an almost devious expression of admiration, like a twisted sort of hero worship. “You _did_ kill someone, didn’t you?!”

“I gotta go check on something,” he stood, refusing to answer on the grounds that he might incriminate himself as he hurried through the cabin.

He wasn’t even entirely surprised when Jack followed him. Dammit.

“Shazza!” He called, as he neared the others, who were working to see if cutting through the storage cells that were left might get them to pockets of water that might be left in the pipes. Provided the cutting torches didn’t boil the water, of course. “Jack was just telling me that - that _he_ wanted to give you a hand. You don’t mind giving him something to do, do you?”

The dark haired woman glanced at him. “Yeah. Absolutely. C’mon over, I could use another set of hands.”

“But I was - “ Jack tried, glaring at Xander.

He grinned, innocently, and darted back towards the back of the ship. Clambering down the ladder into the storage hold, he darted towards where Riddick had been chained up. 

Key word: “was”.

Because the convict certainly _wasn’t_ chained up there, anymore.

It took Xander a moment of just staring at the place where he’d been sitting, stunned, before he noticed the slight gap in the top of the beam, where it had broken under the strain of the crash landing. And he knew exactly how Riddick had gotten loose, as soon as he saw that.

He headed to a rift in the hull, and peered through, scowling.

Yeah, he was thrilled that Riddick had gotten free. Xander hated seeing Riddick chained. Hated it. It sent a rankling jolt through him that said to set him free immediately at any cost. 

But it pissed him off that the other was _gone_.

Because it meant he’d left without him. Dammit, he knew Riddick had said he wouldn’t save him again, but did that also mean he was just going to ditch him here with Johns and a bunch of miners and holy men? _Oh thanks muchly_ , Riddick. Forget that ‘glad you’re alive’ sex. 

He just really wished he’d had a few minutes to tell him what Aereon had said. That might’ve been important. 

Well, the solution was simple.

Follow.

Xander clambered through the hole Riddick had clearly exited through, and dropped to the sand. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he frowned, considering where the other had likely gone. Heading towards the sunset, he bent to pick up a piece of what had been Riddick’s cuffs, and sniffed at the chain.

Yeah, definitely Riddick’s chains. But he hadn’t moved towards the sunset, like the chains would imply. Obviously.

Hell, the scent of the other man didn’t even carry out this far. Riddick had just thrown them. He dropped them back to the ground, then started heading away from the twin suns sinking below the horizon, determined to find Riddick.

“Hey, hey, where do you think you’re going?”

He hissed. _Busted_. “No where, Johns. Just trying to see if I can see anything. You know, like water or signs of life.”

“Or Riddick,” he glowered at him. His gun was out, though not up. Itchy trigger finger, you blue eyed devil?

“Why?” Xander asked, innocently. “Did you lose your prisoner, Johns?”

“You helped him out of here, and we both know it, Xander,” he glowered at him, then abruptly hesitated, looking him up and down, thoughtfully. “Or you didn’t. Damn, you _didn’t,_ did you? Riddick ran off and left you. Well, _damn_ , Xander!”

“Johns...” he growled.

“Guess you leaned your lesson, huh?” He smirked, dropping his gun into its holster. “Riddick don’t give two shits about you, Xander. He _used_ you as long as you were convenient, but now he’s moved on. I never would have done you like that.”

“Bullshit,” he snapped, clenching his fists. “You fucking tried to rape me, that’s way worse than anything Riddick’s ever done, Johns.”

He stepped up to him, blue devil eyes flashing. “I ain’t gonna lie to you. I made mistakes. But it could’ve been different.”He took another step closer, their chests just touching. “Could be.”

Xander just touched the tip of the ulak to John’s belly, not stepping back. “Not happening, Johns.”

“You won’t do it,” he said, confidently. “Riddick’s not here to fight your battles, Xander.”

He grinned, teeth bared in an almost vicious expression. “Things change, Johns. Riddick doesn’t has to fight my battles for me, anymore. Turns out I’m really good at slitting throats.”

Johns ignored the press of the blade, and actually stepped closer. 

Xander didn’t shift the ulak back, so it was close to breaking the skin, but just didn’t quite. “Careful there, Johns. I’m not above slashing your fucking belly open.”

“But you won’t,” he said, calmly. “You won’t, Xander. Because you _need_ me. You need me to get off this shithole of a planet, and you need me to help you find Riddick.”

“I don’t need shit,” he snapped.

“Yeah, you do. Because you don’t escape like our convict friend does. If I tell everyone that you’re an escaped convict - busted out of Butcher Bay, even - they’ll lock you up so fast you’ll never see your bald boyfriend again. He won’t come back for you this time, Xander. He probably thinks you’ve moved on to fucking the next man who’ll protect you.” He leered, a vile expression. “Wanna prove him right?”

Xander bolted back from him. He didn’t care that it meant he had less bladed leverage on him. He just wanted Johns no where near him.

The merc chuckled. “Touchy, ain’t you?”

“Fuck you, Johns.” he snapped.

“Look,” he held his hands out, lazily. “All this comes down to is whether you want to do this the easy way or the hard way. Easy way is you give me what I want, and I’ll make sure the others leave you alone. Hell, I’ll even give you a cut when we bring Riddick in.”

Xander regarded him with suspicion. “And the hard way?”

“I tell everyone you’re Riddick’s little slam bitch and let the others do what they want with you.”

He growled. “Extortion. That’s just another way of saying rape again, Johns.”

“That’s your final word on it, then?” He considered him, hand on his belt.

“Yeah, Johns, that’s my final answer,” he snarked right back, too angry to even crack jokes about wanting to be a millionaire, thank you very much. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

“Got it.”

Johns stepped back, and flicked a collapsible baton out, and started towards Xander, the baton at the ready.

“I’ll meet you weapon for weapon, Johns,” he said, incredulously. _He_ had the ulaks, and Johns just had a nightstick. The other man might be good at what he did, but Xander had gotten _very_ good at fighting, and _very_ very good with the ulaks. Riddick had sort of insisted. There was no way that Johns was really going to best him on this. He didn’t really think he could, did he? “You _aren’t_ going to beat me.”

“I don’t need to,” he smirked, then raised his voice. “Escaped prisoner! I need some help!”

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” he gaped at him.

Johns just grinned, cheekily, and called again, “Help! Escaped prisoner Someone give me a hand, he’s dangerous!”

“Fuck you,” he snarled, and did exactly what he had failed to do dozens of other times since he’d first disappeared from his basement in California.

Xander rabbited. 

Dashing across the hard packed sand, Xander flew away from the setting suns, hoping to use the coming darkness as a cover, determined that whatever else happened, he wouldn’t be at Johns’ mercy again. He pumped his arms as he ran, darting between rising spires of rock. All he could hear was the pounding of his own heart, the thumping of his feet against the ground, the sound of his own lungs forcing in air. Every muscle in his body was struggling now, crying out from the pain of fighting for air in this oxygen thin environment, lactic acid building up too much in his muscles. He had a breather looped around his chest, ready if he could get to it, but Xander didn’t have time to breathe. He had to run. 

Xander all but vaulted over the ridge of a sand dune, dropping into a valley and halted, abruptly.

He’d been expecting the other edge of the sky to get black, to get dark. He expected night to be coming. But night wasn’t coming. There was another sun. There was another fucking sun, bright and blue and startlingly bright, coming towards them over the sky.

Stunned into stillness, Xander almost missed when Johns leapt over the ridge after him.

He bolted the moment he heard him, though, racing through the sand, which was soft here, like trying to run on California’s beaches, sinking into the sand, up to his knees. Running wasn’t going to work, not here, so he jerked them out as well as he could, and _rolled_ down the dune, rolling out onto gravel and rocks and scrambled to his feet again. Running again, he tried to put as much distance between himself and Johns as he could. 

What he hadn’t expected, in his disorientation, was that he’d managed to loop nearer to the wreckage again, and that some of the crew members had heard John’s cries for help.

Some kind of primitive weapon cracked down on his head, and Xander went down on one knee, startled. He pushed up again, without a pause, but the weapon cracked down on his head again, and he went down again, harder this time.

Johns’ baton cracked down on his forehead this time, and he rolled away from him, struggling to get up. 

Another blow, and he fell again, only this time, before he could get up, the merc had slapped cuffs onto him, and twisted both of his arms up, until there was actually danger of his shoulders coming out of their sockets. Xander yowled and struggled and put up a fight like a wildcat caught in a trap, frantic and harsh. He never would have forgiven himself if he hadn’t, but Johns had the advantage here - he had help, and he wasn’t chained up. 

In the end, he chose conservation of energy. 

Or at least, that’s what he’d tell himself later, so he wouldn’t feel as guilty for just giving up.

  
 

\---

  
 

Johns had learned his lesson with Riddick.

Xander sat with his arms stretched out, cuffed, with a chain between them. He couldn’t pull on them, not really, his hands just sort of rested out like he’d been strung up on a cross, and wasn’t _that_ a twisted reference to be making. He sighed, leaning back, head resting on the wall. 

Except that Johns never really _had_ learned his lesson. Or maybe Xander had never learned.

No. 

_Riddick_ hadn’t learned his lesson.

Or maybe he had. 

“Go away.”

Xander didn’t open his eyes. He was focusing on the lightest sounds, the soft _tap tap_ of sand brushing against the side of the wreckage in the light desert breeze, and the occasional soft touch of something _else_ touching on the side of the metal. He wasn’t sure what that metallic sound was, but he wondered if it might be footsteps. He didn’t think it actually was. Dammit. But there were definitely footsteps _inside_ the ship, and despite his attempts to get them to go away, they were still coming.

“So. Come to mock the prisoner a little, is that what this is?” Xander leaned back, eyes still closed. “I heard someone screaming earlier. Does that mean you finally managed to catch Riddick?”

“Someone’s dead.” Fry said, and there was a catch to her voice. She sounded like she was fighting tears. 

“Which one? Oh, _please_ tell me it’s Johns?” He grinned, wriggling a little in his seat.

“Zeke.” She said, bitingly.

It took a minute for Xander to sort all of the strangers out in his head, then hissed slightly. He’d liked that guy. He was rough and tumble and not afraid to speak his mind. And his Australian sounding accent was one of the coolest things he’d ever heard. He’d thought that he’d be the one most likely to ignore Johns and let Xander free, actually. Guess not now. “Damn. I liked him.”

“Did you really?” She shifted, leaning on some piece of metal that scratched against another piece as she put her weight on it. A precarious perch at best. “We found the scene not long after Johns brought you in.”

“So?”

“Did you kill him?”

Xander hesitated, and cracked open a single eye, considering her. She looked tired, worn. Exhausted. Slightly sun-burnt, even, a splash of red across the bridge of her nose, which made sense as the suns never set here. Eventually a burn was to be expected. “Why would you think I killed him?”

She hesitated, then pointed out, slowly, “Well, when there are two escaped convicts among the survivors, I think it makes sense to make sure none of them killed the person.”

“Ask Riddick,” He leaned back, closing his eye again. “I didn’t kill Zeke.”

“But you’ve killed before.”

“Did Johns tell you that?” He smirked, relaxed - or as relaxed as he could be, considering he was all awkwardly chained up. 

“No.” Fry shifted, the metal scraping again. “He didn’t tell us anything.”

“Don’t think that’s just a _little_ weird?” Xander’s eyes snapped open as he leaned forward, straining as far as the chains would let him. “I came on this ship as just a _normal_ passenger, not even with Johns, I haven’t done anything to hurt any of you, but Johns just goes ‘this is one of my prisoners’ and you all fall over yourselves to chain me up and try to bash my face in. Really. Does that Marshall’s uniform really command that much respect out in these parts? Cause if it really does, I really need to get one.”

She shifted a little closer, hands resting on her hips. “Why would he lock you up, then, if you’re _not_ a convict?”

He snorted. “You mean he really didn’t tell you?”

She shook her head. 

“Oh, _really_? You mean I get to spoil the surprise?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Spoiler alerts, then, I don’t care, I’m taking his fun away, even if it means it sucks for me. He locked me up because I’m sleeping with Riddick. Was sleeping with Riddick? Am sleeping with Riddick, I guess. I mean, obviously not right _now_ , but I was, up until Johns caught him again and took him on board the Hunter-Gratzner. I mean, when you think about it, I’ve been sleeping with him pretty much exclusively for a year. Wait, three years, really, because we’ve been in cryo for two... _damn_.” He blinked at her, sidetracked by his own rant. “When you think about it, that’s practically a long term relationship. Only we aren’t _in_ any kind of relationship, and I’m pretty sure Riddick wouldn’t do them even if we were. He’s kind of not that kind of guy, you know?”

“...you got locked up because you’re sleeping with _Riddick_?” she repeated, gaping at him.

Xander shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“First off, I don’t believe you. And second, that is the most ridiculous reason I’ve ever heard,” She rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest, defensively. It was like her expectations had been rocked, and that scared her. “Johns is an officer of the law, he wouldn’t just - that is ridiculous.”

“Officer of the law,” he snorted, shaking his head.

“Johns is a good man.” She said, almost fiercely in her intense need to believe that.

“Sure.” He stretched his neck, cracking his joints slightly as he considered her. His face had purpled and bruised impressively, distinct lines from Johns’ baton. “Want to know the whole problem behind this? It’s because my being here represents something that Johns wants but can’t get. I haven’t decided yet if he’s pissed because Riddick got something that he wanted... or if it’s because _I_ got something that Johns wanted.”

“You’re insane,” she snapped, and started moving away.

“Fry, wait.” Xander shifted forward. It was desperate, and it was stupid. But damn it, this was serious. And if he couldn’t get out of here... “Wait.”

She hesitated, glancing back at him.

“Don’t leave me here.” He said, biting his lip. “Whatever... whatever happens, and whatever you guys do... don’t leave me here. I can’t die out here, not like this.”

“Thought you said you were sleeping with Riddick.” She scoffed. “Shouldn’t he come back for you?”

He blinked at her. “...maybe if the situation were different. But he doesn’t need me anymore. Johns was right, as much as I hate to admit it... I’m not useful to him anymore. Well, I mean, it was fun while it lasted. Sort of. Okay, it wasn’t really _fun_ , but the sex wasn’t half bad. Well, it was good. Okay, it was mindblowingly fucking amazing, once I got over the whole ‘oh my god, I’m having gay sex’ thing, but... I mean... Riddick... is going to get out of here. He’ll find a way off the planet, if it’s the last thing he does. And I’d slow him down. I always slow him down. I guess I just sort of got to like being the thing that slowed him down. But... Johns is gambling on him coming back for me. And Riddick knows that’s his trick now. He isn’t coming.”

“You don’t know that.” Fry frowned.

“I know Riddick.” Xander tugged on the chains again. They didn’t budge any further than he already had them. “He isn’t coming. He’s a survivor. He’s getting out of here.”

Fry walked back towards him again, considering him seriously. “Did Riddick kill Zeke?”

“Zeke?” He blinked at her, surprised by the shift in the conversation. “I dunno... what did the body look like? All slashed up, or...?”

“There was no body.” She frowned. “Just a lot of blood.”

He blinked at her. “Well, I mean, Riddick isn’t against dragging bodies off somewhere, but... not out here, in this heat, without the oxygen. He’s not stupid. I doubt it was Riddick.”

Fry clearly looked like she was seriously considering that thought, actually pondering the merits of trusting an alleged ‘convict’. 

“Look.” Xander squirmed as far forward as he could, his arms pulled back by the chains, his shoulders screaming against the strain. “I’m just bait for Riddick, that’s all I am to Johns. Once he gets Riddick, I don’t even think he’ll keep me around. I can’t die like that, Fry. Just... I’ll find out what got Zeke for you, if that’s what you want. Just _don’t_ leave me here.”

“I don’t have the keys anyway...” she backed up. 

“Dammit, Fry, this is serious!” He strained harder against the chains, which were now digging into his wrists. “I _have_ to get out of here!”

“Johns won’t leave you here,” she said, firmly, and turned, leaving the room. 

“Fry, goddammit, you can’t just _leave_ me!” Xander railed, struggling. He was starting to panic. She was the compassionate one. She was the softy who would actually listen to what a person said, instead of just who they were. If _she_ wouldn’t bust him lose, there was actually a good chance he wasn’t _going_ to get out of here. Part of him almost wanted to beg someone to stick him in cryo, so he could desperately try to find Aereon in his dreams... maybe she had even the faintest idea of what to do, if he _did_ manage to find her. But this was a lot bigger than just him now, she had told him so, “Fuck, this is - goddammit, Jack, don’t even _try_ and sneak up on me!”

The kid poked her head up from behind the pile of rubble she’d been using as cover, eyes wide. “How’d you know I was there?”

“Because you stink,” he snapped, feeling peevish, then sighed. “You don’t stink. It’s because you knocked something over. I heard you. What do you want?”

Jack nodded, though she was still clearly considering that as she clambered over the rubble, nearing him, but staying deliberately out of his reach. She considered him thoughtfully. Very seriously.

“Yes?” He drawled.

“Are you really sleeping with Riddick?”

Xander groaned, hanging his head so that his chin rested on his collarbone. “Aw, hell, kid, you were here for that part too? Dammit.”

“C’mon, don’t hold out on me, here!” She protested, face eager. “Is it true? Do you think if I asked, Riddick would - “

“Don’t you even finish that thought,” Xander snarled, straining at his chains.

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not even _that_ young, Xander, so don’t - “

“I wouldn’t care if you were fucking forty two,” he snarled, teeth bared viciously, eyes narrowed and intense. It was a look of complete willingness to tear apart anyone who contradicted him, of absolute jealous rage. Intellectually, if asked, Xander would have completely denied that he would ever be jealous over Riddick. Hell, he knew “they” weren’t anything but convenience, proved by the fact that Riddick had disappeared the moment he could. Emotionally, however, Xander was possessive as all hell. “Not a fucking chance.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, but her eyes were wide. “You do that thing too, with your - “

“Kid.” Johns barked, cutting her off. “Get the hell out of here.”

“But - “ Jack tried.

“Jack,” Xander said softly.

She huffed, rolling her eyes, and stormed up the stairs, letting the hoses for her breather bump on each step of the stairs as she went. Moments like that, he really remembered she really _was_ just a child.

“Worried about the kid?” Johns smirked.

“I’ll willingly keep everyone away from you, Johns,” he grinned, wickedly. “Heard one of our survivors isn’t anymore. Voted off the island, huh?”

“You are aware that none of your inane jokes make sense, yeah?” Johns tapped his fingers on the stock of his rifle, frowning at him.

“There was a time you liked my lame jokes,” he reminded him.

“I’d have laughed at dog shit, if you’d said it was funny,” he said dryly. “I was _trying_ to bed you, Xander, remember?”

“I vaguely recall, yes.”

Johns smirked, considering Xander for a moment. “I hear you’re more popular now that you’re a convict than you were before.”

“Find Riddick yet, Johns?” he changed the topic, easily, taunting.

He was practically asking for a beating, and he knew it. He didn’t really mind. In a way, if he got Johns to crack down on him, to lay him out and make him bleed, it meant Xander had at least somehow _earned_ being chained and confined. If Johns just left him tied up with no damage, then he wasn’t really being punished for his failure in getting caught, was he? 

Johns, unfortunately, seemed unwilling to play into the taunts.

He kept the gun and the baton firmly in his belt as he considered Xander, smirking. “No. But I have a plan. We’re going for a walk, Xander.”

“What, gonna feed me to the same thing that ate Zeke?”

“Zeke wasn’t eaten. Unless Riddick ate him.”

“He doesn’t eat people,” Xander crossed his legs, resting his right ankle on his left knee, just casual and relaxed. “Drinks their blood, sure. Told me that in the winter, he likes to cut it with peppermint schnapps. But in the summer, now, well, he’d just drink it straight. It tastes a lot like copper... lots of iron, if you get the right people. Just drink it hot and fresh, slides right down the throat, warms you from the inside...”

“I know the trick, Xander,” Johns cut him off. “Get them off balance. Make them pay attention to what you’re unnerving them with, not your own fears.”

“Fears?” He laughed. “Who’s scared?”

“Lies, then.”

“Johns, I ain’t lied to you all day,” Xander drawled. “I drink blood, sometimes. Went a little vampiric, I guess, it’d totally freak out my friends if I ever got back - “

“You’re never getting back to Earth, Xander,” Johns grabbed Xander’s left hand, jerking it forward to unhook the chain. Confused, he pulled his right hand down, the chain skittering through the beams Johns had laced them through to fall, like a coiled snake, on the floor. “But you might get off this planet.”

“Oh yeah?” he regarded him suspiciously.

Johns hooked the chain to the left cuff, leaving Xander with his hands cuffed together in front of him, and a long metal chain leash out in front of him - a leash that Johns hooked to his utility belt.

“What, now I’m your dog?” Xander sneered, but stood, testing weight on the ankle he’d twisted going down in the sand. Didn’t even twinge. Good.

“Depends. You gonna come when I call?”

“Nope.” 

“Then I guess you’re just my prisoner,” Johns smirked, and tugged on the chain, heading out of the wreckage. “Come on, we’re going to go help find water.”

“And you’re taking the convict with you to go get water? Nice.” Xander stumbled out into the sunlight, then swore, throwing up his hands to shade his eyes. He hadn’t been prepared for the abrupt shift from the half-darkness of the ship to the glare of two brilliant suns. “Son of a bitch!”

Johns snorted. “Getting more and more like Riddick every day, Xander.”

“Funny,” he grumbled, trying to protect his eyes. 

“Here.”

Xander slowly opened a single eye, carefully peering at the other through his eyelashes. He supposed that if he let himself adjust, he’d have eventually been all right, but until he did, it was hard to make out shapes. Everyone seemed to sort of glow under the harsh golden-red light of the twin suns hanging over them.

There was something dangling from Johns’ fingers. It took him a few long minutes to realize it was Riddick’s goggles, the pair Johns had on him, the pair Riddick had been wearing when he was captured. 

“I can’t see through those, they’re too dark,” Xander closed his eye again.

“Give it another shot,” he bumped his arm with the goggles.

“ _Fine_ , Johns. At least they’ll work as a blindfold so I won’t need to see you anymore,” he grumbled, struggling to tug them on. The strap caught a little in his now-long curls, which was quite unpleasant, but he finally squirmed them into place over his eyes, feeling entirely stupid. “What, just want me to look like Riddick, now? Gonna shave my head and try to pass me off as your bounty, next?”

“Just give it a shot,” he rolled his eyes.

Which was when Xander realized that he could _see_ that Johns was rolling his eyes.

He could actually see him, even though the too-dark glass that he could barely see a thing through before. “Damn, the two suns thing really _is_ bright. I can actually _see.”_

“Thought you might be able to,” he smirked at him.

“Ha ha. Unfortunately, they’re not strong enough to hide you from me. Damn. I’d much rather that they were dark enough that I couldn’t see you.”

Johns smirked, and tugged on the chain, actually laughing when the teenager tripped and almost fell. Laughing lightly, he headed out towards some of the taller standing hills, in the direction of the once-again rising blue sun, smirking. 

Xander fell into step behind him, relieved that he could actually _see_ now.

As they walked, Fry fell into step beside them, glancing every few moments at Xander. “What’s this?”

“Fry, we talked about this...” he said, lowly.

Xander glanced at them both, smirking slightly as he followed Johns, trying to act as casual as he could, hands draped lazily in front of him, as though he had actually chosen to have his hands in front of him, rather than having them cuffed in front of him. Fry and Johns were talking rapidly, and the captain kept glancing back at him, acting as though she didn’t think he could hear her. 

He could.

And he thought she was an idiot for thinking he couldn’t hear. They were discussing this plan of Johns, which apparently included trying to find water, trying to figure out what had gotten Zeke - she still thought it was some kind of animal, and Johns still thought it was Riddick - and trying to see if they could find any trace of Riddick. He was pretty sure that Fry just didn’t know that Johns’ goal was more about column C than it was about any of the other needs. 

Xander sighed, and tilted his head back to look up at the sky. Hopefully Riddick would have the good sense to stay away.

Even if Johns killed him.

Which he might.

Sighing again, he wished he still had his breather, so that he could get a few hits of real, honest to goodness oxygen, but he’d lost that somewhere when he went all helter skelter through the hills, and he wasn’t really sure if anyone had ever managed to pick it up, or if it was permanently lost to the sands of this damn desert planet. He sort of hoped someone had found it, at least. Make it useful for _someone_ , at least. Xander followed exactly in Johns footsteps as he walked, making sure not to leave any footprints of his own. If he hadn’t already been used to sort of following everything Riddick had taught him to do with an almost eager fervour, he would have been totally creeped out by this new habit.

The holy man and his boys were following them, chattering among themselves in a language Xander didn’t recognize. He was pretty sure it was something from an Islamic nation, but he didn’t really know much about anything about the Middle East other than the fact that he vaguely remembered a lot of people getting really angry about it. He didn’t really get it. This El-Imam guy and his kids seemed pretty nice.

It was the Imam that stepped up beside him now, walking just outside of Xander’s reach, but not by far. He was the most trusting person he’d seen yet since Johns went all betrayer on him. “Hello, Alexander.”

“Xander,” he corrected, quickly. “Alexander is the name of some fancy pants guy. I’m not, you know, anything like that. I’m just some guy whose mother gave him a fancy pants name like Lavelle Alexander. So they call you Imam. Is that actually your name, or a title?”

“A title,” he smiled, softly. “Much as yours is, apparently.”

He snorted, and nodded. “Yeah. Apparently I have a title, not a name. So what’s your real name?”

“Abu al-Walid.” He smiled.

“Abu.” He repeated, considering that. “Would you rather I call you Abu, or Imam?”

“Imam is what most call me, I admit. It means ‘teacher’.”

Xander nodded, considering that. “Teacher. I like it. I may have to use it on Giles... he’s my Imam, I guess. Only I’m probably never going to see him again.”

“Whyever not?” The Imam asked, thoughtfully. 

“Because I’m from Earth.”

There was a scrambling sound behind them, and Xander and the Imam both turned to look behind them. A bizarre looking middle aged man scrambled up to them. He was wearing a bizarre assortment of clothes that looked like he’d gotten them in some high class yard sale somewhere, and a pair of round framed glasses, though one lens was broken. He sort of looked like a museum curator who had landed on hard times. He pressed up between the two of them, actually bumping up against Xander’s shoulders as they walked. Apparently the newcomer’s eagerness to get there meant more than distrusting the criminal did. 

“I’m sorry,” the man puffed, trying to keep pace with them as they walked. “But did you say you were from Earth?”

Xander glanced at the Imam, then at this newcomer. “Yeah. I’m from Earth.”

“ _Really_?!” He asked, eagerly. “ _Well_ then! My name is Paris P. Ogilvie. Antiquities dealer.” He offered his hand, not really taking the time to shake Xander’s hand properly - not that Xander really could, what with the handcuffs - before he was already launching into talking quickly. “Do you remember much about Earth, or were you one of the few that fled earlier?”

“I lived there up until three years ago,” he shrugged. “Grew up there.”

Paris looked like he was absolutely going to wet himself in excitement. “Tell me _everything_.”

He blinked at him. “Everything.”

“Yes. Absolutely everything.” His eyes were bright as he scrambled to keep up with them. “I have always wanted to go to Earth. Is it true that it is really a primitive world with no space travel?”

He hesitated, and nodded. “Yeah, far as I know. I mean, _I’ve_ never been to space. I mean, before now.”

Paris looked absolutely delighted. “What about the weapons, I sort of have a hobby for collecting weapons, do they still use swords and bows?”

“No... we’ve ah... sort of moved on. Sort of. Okay, _most_ people have moved on, they use guns and rifles and machine guns and stuff... but around my hometown, we use swords and stakes and things, sometimes.”

“Stakes?” He blinked at him. 

“Big pointy wooden sticks that we’d put through the chests of things. You know, kind of like a really short spear.”

“Ah.” He blinked, then offered him a short spear. “Like this?”

“Not quite that long, yet,” Xander blinked at it. “You do realize that you just offered a spear to the guy everyone’s scared of, right?”

Paris hesitated. “Ah. Right. I hadn’t thought of that.” He tugged the spear back a bit, but didn’t slow down. “Wait. I thought we were all scared of Riddick. After all, you weren’t locked up when we crashed, and Johns _did_ let you out for quite a while before he had you locked up... perhaps you aren’t really so dangerous?”

“Naw,” Xander grinned. “I’m dangerous. Just not the right kind of dangerous, I guess. I’m dangerous in that I have a close friend who’s sort of evil.”

“And who is that?” The Imam asked, lightly. 

“Riddick.” He grinned at him. “Sorry to offend your sensibilities, Imam, but I’m sleeping with the murderer.”

He laughed softly, shaking his head. “I think you’d be surprised to find, young man, that even us teachers understand the need to be human. Just because I am a man of the faith does not mean that I think that people should not be happy.”

He snorted. “Sleeping with Riddick doesn’t make me happy.”

“Then why would you do it?” He asked, as though genuinely curious.

Paris looked between them both, curiously.

Xander hesitated. “Well, because I - well... he makes me happy. He actually makes me really happy. But knowing that it’s just this temporary thing... I mean... _that_ doesn’t make me happy. It’s hard to explain. I guess it’s sort of that... Riddick makes me happy. I just don’t make _him_ happy. I think I irritate the hell out of him.”

“I doubt that, strongly.” The Imam smiled softly.

“I sure hope it isn’t true,” Johns voice joined them, and Xander blinked, realizing that the chain had actually gone slack. He hadn’t even noticed, he’d been concentrating on the conversation with the others. He got distracted by talking about Riddick a lot, apparently. “After all, you picked him over me. Hate to see that he doesn’t even want you after that.”

“Fuck you, Johns.”

The Imam cleared his throat, frowning. 

“Sorry, Imam,” he flushed, embarrassed. Was swearing in front of an Imam the same as swearing in front of a librarian and getting his disapproving expression over the top of his glasses? 

“Come on,” Johns jerked the chain a little, tugging Xander along.

He scowled, and stumbled along after him, still stepping in Johns footprints as the other man tugged him over a crest of a hill. 

Below them was a sea of bones. 

“What the hell...?” Xander breathed, eyes wide as he gaped at the massive graveyard. “What _is_ this?!”

“We found it while you three were having your little chat fest about sleeping with murderers and living on backwoods planets.” Johns smirked. “I thought it was a fitting place to take you.”

“Why?” He glanced at him, confused.

“You’ll see.” He tugged Xander’s chain - ha, he was actually yanking his chain - as he headed down the hill, leading him down the stone strewn path as he led him towards a massive skeleton that looked like it belonged to some kind of whale. Leading him down towards the massive skull, Johns jerked the chain taut, and down, forcing Xander to his knees. 

“It’s my graveyard, too,” Xander murmured, suddenly understanding.

“You got it.” He smirked.

“You mean, if Riddick doesn’t come to rescue me again,” Xander lifted his jaw, stubbornly. He was going to have to get used to being dead, he supposed. “He won’t, Johns. I hope you don’t mind never getting another chance again, because Riddick _isn’t_ coming this time.”

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” The other said, as he tugged his rifle out of his holster, and pressed it against the back of Xander’s neck.

“Johns, wait... _wait_...”

“Start whimpering, Xander, we need Riddick to find you, don’t we?” He grinned.

“God _dammit_ , Johns!” He cried, panicked, his voice catching. It was a horrified sound. He knew he was going to die, he knew at this rate, he would, but he couldn’t die, oh god, not right now, not before - not before... “Listen to me, wait! It’s not just me! If you kill me... I - Johns, I can’t explain it, but...”

“You can explain after we catch Riddick,” he took the safety off, calmly.

Xander squeezed his eyes shut tightly behind Riddick’s goggles, trembling finely as he waited for the shot to pierce his skull and kill him, splattering brains across the bones, giving blood to bodies that had been dead for far too long already.

Johns squeezed the trigger.  
  
[The Queen's Croquet-Ground](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/48572.html)  
  



	9. White Rabbit - The Queen's Croquet-Ground

  


****White Rabbit - The Queens Croquet-Ground

 

There was a light knock on the door, and Giles quickly set his teacup down, then headed to the front door of his apartment to open it, blinking slightly, surprised. “Ah! Jessica, come in, come in.”

Jessica Harris stepped into his apartment, smiling slightly. She looked worn, tired, dark circles under her eyes. But she was neatly dressed, her slightly greying hair tugged up into a neat bun, and there wasn’t even the lightest scent of alcohol on her breath. Setting her purse down on his desk, she slipped into one of the chairs at his kitchen table, quietly. “Any luck?”

“I’m sorry, no. Tea?”

“Please,” she nodded, relaxing into the chair, closing her eyes. “I thought maybe that book would have helped...”

“I’m sorry,” he said again, putting the kettle on the stove. It had been a very long time, that they’d been searching for Xander. He’d disappeared from the Harris basement, and Jessica had feared the worst. It didn’t help that, within weeks, she hadn’t heard a thing from him. She’d called Giles, remembering that Xander had mentioned him several times, but he hadn’t known where he was, either. He’d rather assumed that Xander was staying home and being safe exactly as Willow and Buffy had ordered him to. For once, he'd thought Xander had actually done what he'd been told. They searched for him around town, but Buffy never spotted any Xander-shaped vampires around town, and a shame-faced, bawling Willow had finally confessed what they had done. 

With Jessica there. In front of Xander’s fairly normal mother, a red-eyed snuffly Willow had admitted everything.

The little group had been shocked when Jessica didn’t freak out or panic about the idea that there were monsters and creatures. Instead, she had taken a deep breath, folded her hands tightly in her lap, and asked for something to drink. Alcohol would be preferred at that moment, thank you. 

But of course she knew. She’d grown up in Sunnydale, spent her whole life avoiding things that went bump in the night, accepting that some of her friends would die by mysterious means. They expected it. While Willow had managed to avoid it her whole life, and Buffy had spent the last several years immersing herself in the world, trying to prevent it, Jessica had spent the last thirty-something years here. She understood.

It might have been easier if Willow did searching spells, but she refused. Flatly completely refused.

“It’s all my fault he’s gone!” She had wailed. “If I hadn’t tried meddling and messing with things, then Xander wouldn’t be gone and I will never do magic again! Never!”

Giles tried to convince her, of course, that magic itself wasn’t evil, it was just that she had rushed into the spell too quickly and without proper prudence, and if she just did more research and maybe got the advice of people who knew more about things than she did, that she could still do effective things with magic. But she completely refused, and declared that it was entirely her fault - though the others involved were quick to note that Buffy was just as much to blame as she was - and that she would never ever do magic again. 

So they had to find Xander in a more “traditional” route. 

It was harder than expected.

After all, it was nearly three years, now, and Xander was still as missing now as he had been then. There were feelers all over the internet, and Jessica had even cashed in her 401k in order to pay for a private investigator to see if they could find any sign of the teenaged boy. Because he _was_ still a teenaged boy, wasn’t he, three years after leaving home, he’d be nineteen. 

(Of course, Jessica had no way to predict that her son had ended up in cryo sleep for just over two of those years, so he was actually about seventeen, still, not nineteen. Cryo sleep was confusing, that way, because it basically locked the person in some kind of temporary stasis, where nothing in their body changed or aged.)

“My investigators gave me their final report, too,” Jessica murmured, accepting the mug Giles handed her, gratefully. “They’ve found nothing.”

Sighing, he settled down in the seat across from her, holding a mug of his own, sipping at it. “So what does this mean for us? What avenue do we take next?”

“All honesty?” Jessica sighed, and set down her mug. “I’m thinking of getting a plot. There won’t be a body to put in it, but at least it might give me some closure. At this point, that’s all I can think to do.”

“Jessica,” he said firmly, reaching across the table to close his hand over hers. “Xander is not dead.”

“You keep saying that,” she said, smiling weakly, fingers curled tightly under his hand. “But no one on this whole planet seems to have seen him in three years. Either he’s dead and left rotting somewhere, or he’s not on the planet anymore. And - “ She held up a single finger. “Before you even suggest that he’s in some hell dimension or something, we had that soothsayer in Cleveland look into that for us, and she said he’s still on _this_ plane of existence.”

“I know,” he sighed softly, nodding. 

“I mean, maybe he’s happy wherever he is,” she said softly. “Lord knows he’s away from Tony, that must help, but... I just want to know that my baby boy is safe.”

Giles nodded, squeezing her hand again, lightly brushing his thumb across the back of her knuckles, gently. “How is Tony, by the way? Has he even noticed that Xander hasn’t come home yet?”

“I doubt it,” she said lightly. “He doesn’t come by the house anymore. He’s rather happy to be living his own little bachelor lifestyle, in that shithole of an apartment he got. The only contact I’ve had with him in months was the phone call I got the day he got the papers for the divorce. He wasn’t thrilled. I suppose I can’t blame him... if the divorce is finalized, he loses his insurance.”

He snorted softly, and released the other’s hand, heading to the counter to set his now empty mug in the sink. “Of course.”

“How do you cook in this kitchen?” She asked, standing as she headed towards the counter herself, picking up a few of the books that were piled on the counters, flicking through one of them for a few moments, humming slightly. Giles watched her as she did, smiling slightly as she turned the pages. “You keep an absolute library even when you’re not at work. One would think you hated the library at school and decided to move it here, instead.”

“Well, I did move quite a few of the materials from the library to here after my Slayer graduated, but I still have plenty of them stored on the shelves at Sunnydale High,” he smirked slightly. 

“Ah, naturally.” She set the book back on the stack, and considered him for a moment. “You need a bigger house.”

He snorted. “And how, exactly, is one meant to find or afford a larger apartment in this town on a librarian’s salary? They don’t pay me a whole lot to make sure that students have access to textbooks and books they don’t want to read.”

“You could move into a house,” she said, lightly.

“And where would I find such a house?” Giles asked, voice just as light and innocent as hers. This was perhaps dangerous ground on which they treaded.

“Well, I have a big empty one that could use the sound of a man’s voice again, or maybe the touch of a few bookshelves.” Jessica grinned, resting her hand lightly on his shoulder, a gentle touch. “And there’s more than enough room there for me, and you, and your books...”

“Hm.” He reached up to push his glasses up. “That sounds like an interesting proposal - “

The front door slammed open, and a young woman’s voice howled, “G-man, I need your literary book smarts, there’s some major shit going - _oh_.” A young woman with long, dark hair hesitated in the doorway, and grinned when she saw the two adults standing there side by side, crossing her arms, a devious look on her face. “Well, look what we have here. Adults behaving like awkward teenagers. Didn’t mean to interrupt your mojo, folks.”

Jessica laughed softly, and twisted to lean properly on the counter, lower back resting on the lip as she considered the girl. “Hello, Faith. And you know you love to interrupt.”

“I really do,” she grinned, bouncing into the room, and tossing one of her arms over Giles’ shoulders, hugging him one armed, smirking. “So I’ll pretend to be sorry about the interrupting, if only because you two are friggin’ adorable together. Anyways, major shit. A strange sort of major shit, I guess. Willow’s freaking out, anyway, so I gotta assume it’s some kind of major shit.”

Giles sighed softly, tugging off his glasses to polish them on his shirt. “What exactly is it, Faith?”

“She got an email. I think it was an email, anyway.” She hesitated. “A weird kind of email, anyway. It’s from Xander.”

Jessica stiffened, eyes wide. “Xander?”

“Yeah. You guys wanna come see, or do we want to tell Willow to come in?”

Giles gaped at the Slayer. “She’s outside?!”

“Yeah, she’s sitting in the car.” She arched a brow, not seeing what the big deal was. She’d been saying for years that she felt like she could feel him out there, somewhere, very much alive. She’d never _met_ the boy, but by the time she’d arrived in Sunnydale, Jessica had sort of become a normal fixture around the group, and she claimed that Slayers could just sense things like that. (Whether she actually had that ability or not was still in debate, but she claimed that anyway.) “Okay, from the look on your faces, I’m assuming go get her. Gimme a second.”

She darted out of the kitchen, but didn’t actually go outside to get the redhead. She just leaned out of the front door of the apartment, and howled, “ _Willow_!”

Giles winced.

Willow darted in a few minutes later, clutching her laptop to her chest, her eyes bright and excited as she set it on the table. “You won’t even _believe_ what I got today, it was just nuts, but it’s awesome, I couldn’t even believe it and - and oh _man_ , Jessica, I’m really glad you’re here, really really glad, because this is sort of for you, oh god, this is so good...” She had the computer open and was starting up her mail, practically vibrating in her chair. “Look!”

Jessica and Giles shifted over to look down at the screen, frowning. 

“That is the most unusual email I have ever seen,” Giles said at last. “That isn’t in English.”

“I know!” Willow beamed up at them, face bright, grin wide. “That’s the best part!”

“The best part?” He frowned, confused. “How is this good?”

“It’s the same language they used to write in when they were little,” Jessica said slowly, pulling a chair over and sitting, slowly. “Willow and Xander used to write it on everything, in their notebooks, on the _walls_ at one point,” she shot Willow a smirk. “I never figured out where in the world the two of you came up with it from.”

“Xander taught me how to write it.” She shrugged, flipping back and forth between the email program and a word processor, typing rapidly. “He knew how to do it, and he just taught me. Man, I haven’t done this in awhile... rusty...”

Jessica leaned closer, frowning as she considered it. “That’s the symbol for his name. I recognize that one.”

“You speak this language of theirs, too?” Giles rested his hands on Jessica’s shoulders, lightly, rubbing her shoulders softly. 

“No, but there was a big fuss when he was in school, the teacher would demand he write his name, and he kept putting this symbol. Refused to actually just write his name. And when the teacher got mad, he started screaming. We had some tough times with him during school.”

“Okay, all translated,” she sat back.

Jessica reached over to turn the computer towards herself, frowning slightly as she read aloud, “ _Dear Willow. I hope this actually gets to you and doesn’t get stopped by the government or something. I’m alive! Oh right, I should probably point out that this is coming from Xander. Right. Well, this is Xander, and I’m alive. I’m in space_ \- space?!” She looked up, gaping at Willow. 

“Oh man,” she murmured.

“ _I’m in space,”_ she kept reading, looking stunned. “ _There’s a couple guys I’m travelling with, and they’re okay. One is this mercenary named Johns, he’s funny, and the other is this guy named Riddick. He’s all muscle. Buffy would totally want him_ \- oh.” She murmured, glancing up at Giles. “He doesn’t know.”

The man looked pained. 

Less than a month after Xander had disappeared, Buffy had gotten sick. Sick enough that she'd needed to be hospitalized, which was a scary thing, for a Slayer. And they'd tried to keep a watch over her while she was there, because a sick slayer was almost unheard of, and because of the newest threat – her vampiric boyfriend, Angel, had lost his soul, and had started trying to destroy Buffy.

And while she was trapped in that hospital, sick and weak, Angel had managed it.

No one had ever turned a Slayer into a vampire before.

Angel was good at doing things no one had never managed to do before.

Clearing her throat, Jessica continued. “ _I like Riddick a lot, he’s teaching me to fight and stuff. Kind of like all that training G-man always wanted to show the Buffster. It’s pretty amazing stuff, actually, and who knew, I’m not bad at doing it, either! We’ve been travelling for awhile, but Johns says sending anything to Earth might take a while to get there. I figured I’d give it a shot with an email, I figure email has_ got _to take less time than it would by travelling He says we’re about ten years travel time away from Earth. Guess I musta gone by magic last time, or something, to get here so fast. But you’d love it out here, Wills, it’s like living in Star Trek everyday! Shit, I gotta close up this letter. Apparently it’ll take longer to ship if it’s long. Please, tell my mom I love her? I’m really sorry I never said goodbye properly. Love you and G-man and the Buffster. Love Xander.”_

Jessica slumped back in her seat, eyes wide.

Giles gently brushed his fingers along the side of her neck, trying to relax her, trying to give her a little bit of calm, if he could. “Your son is alive, Jessica.”

She nodded, curling her fingers over his hands, squeezing gently. “Yeah.”

“But he doesn’t even know about Buffy!” Willow cried, displeased. “That was so long ago, now!”

“One can hardly blame him,” Giles said lightly. “In _space_? Well, thank the gods that he ended up on some kind of vessel or something, for travelling.. consider the chances that he could have just appeared in _space_ itself, with no oxygen.” 

Jessica shuddered.

“Sorry,” he murmured, and bent to kiss the top of her head, apologetically. 

She nodded, leaning back against him, closing her eyes, and murmured, “He’s alive. Xander is _alive_.”

  
 

\---

  
 

The gun fired, echoing through the valley, the explosion of the gunpowder ringing through the hollow-ness of the bones, rattling between the ribs and the skulls, a deafening ring that made everyone’s ears buzz and ring.

Xander sucked in a sharp breath.

He could feel blood, hot and sticky, running down the side of his temple, down his jaw, down his neck. It was soaking into his shirt, staining his collar scarlet. There was a lot of blood, more than he expected, but he knew, clearer than anything, that the blood wasn’t actually his. His head wasn’t the one that was bleeding this much.

Twisting his head up, Xander blinked, confused. He hadn’t ducked. And from the look on Johns’ face, he hadn’t quite expected this, either.

“Oh dear god,” Paris gasped. He had come up behind them, seeming like he was going to try and interrupt, but hadn’t quite gotten there in time. The only person who _had_ managed to reach them in time, in order to interrupt, was one of the Imam’s boys. He stood in front of them, eyes wide and pale, looking stunned.

And bleeding.

Blood was bubbling from a _hole_ that had been blasted out of the young teenager’s shoulder, which had been where all the blood had come from. But Johns hadn’t meant to shoot Hassan, he’d been trying to shoot _Xander_. 

“Hassan!” The Imam cried out, running forward to catch the teenager when he staggered, coughing up blood. He slumped down towards the sandy ground with his precious cargo in his arms, cradling Hassan carefully, trying to ease his pain. He was speaking in low tones to him in that language Xander didn’t recognize again, gentle melodic lilts as he tried to soothe his pain. It was obvious already that the boy wasn’t going to last much longer, and it was really all he could do to just ease the pain. 

“You shot the boy!” Paris cried, turning to face Johns, flailing slightly. “You _shot_ the boy! He isn’t a prisoner! What kind of Marshall are you, man?!”

“I didn’t - “ he started, then halted. “ _Cocksucker_!”

Xander struggled to his feet, not caring that Johns still _had_ the gun, that Johns was clearly starting to realize why he had missed a head just feet from him and managed to hit a teenager instead. He had to get up, had to get away, if he could. And he definitely meant to.

“ _No_ ,” Johns pressed the gun against the back of his neck again. “Not happening. Stay _right_ there, Xander.”

“You’ve already failed to hit me once, Johns,” Xander lifted his chin, clenching his jaw. “Do you really want to try that one again?”

“Lucky once,” he clicked off the safety again. 

A stone hit the side of John’s gun, and it knocked to the side. He fired when it did, but whether that was because he actually meant to shoot Xander or because he was startled into doing it, Xander didn’t really know. The shot hit one of the massive skeletons, shattering the bone and sending it raining shards and chips over the sand. 

Xander didn’t wait another moment. He snapped his bound hands down, breaking the chain out of John’s hands, then snatched the end off of the other’s utility belt.

Johns tried to stop him, naturally. Xander might not be worth anything, in terms of bounty, and Johns may have once wanted something else from him. But the greed was the creed, among the mercenaries, and they’d do whatever they had to do to get what they wanted. Once, that had meant dosing him with morphine. Now, that meant trying to kill him to draw Riddick, weirdly overprotective Riddick, out of his hiding place. 

Xander ran again.

This time, though, he had an advantage.

Ducking under a massive rib cage, he dashed through the skeletons, treating them like a maze. It was exactly like running through cemetery after wooded cemetery and while it was a bit of a weird analogy, it was a situation he was used to. Feet pounding on the hard packed rocky floor of the valley, Xander ran towards his only genuine hope of escape - a familiar, solid, steady heartbeat thump-thumping away among the graveyard. 

Whether Riddick found Xander first or if it was the other way around would likely be an area of debate for years.

If either of them managed to live that long.

Whichever way it really went, Xander’s up-reaching hand landed solidly in Riddick’s, and the older man gripped tightly, and hauled upwards. He bent almost double to allow him to swing his legs up through the opening Riddick was hauling him up through, hooking them and using his legs to haul himself up into the space - what had once been the sinus cavity of this huge beast. Slumping down to lay against the bone, making himself as small as possible, he tugged the chain up, pooling it between them so that it would be out of sight should someone come into this particular skeleton.

“Nice goggles,” Riddick growled, barely audible. 

“Trade if you want,” he smirked, trying to making his breath even out.

“And why am I saving you again?” He breathed, his lips brushing against Xander’s ear again. Xander wasn’t really sure if he did it that way so that he could transfer information virtually silently, or if it was because he just really wanted to torture him. He was pretty sure it was the torture bit. “I said I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Thank you,” Xander just grinned.

“You owe me,” Riddick rumbled, then pressed his palm against Xander’s mouth, pressing down for a moment. He didn’t really have to do this, not really. He’d heard the sort of click-tap of gravel being displaced just enough to bump against a bone, someone stalking them.

It didn’t take a genius - or a super sensitive nose - to figure out who it was.

Johns passed below them, gun sweeping over the landscape, searching. Neither of them breathed, or moved. A few moments later, he seemed to move on - only he didn’t, not really. He sighed, and leaned against a rib, barely looking up when a pissed off, harried looking Fry joined him. “...’lo, Captain.”

“What the _hell_ is wrong with you?!” She snapped.

Xander shifted only slightly, listening intently. He felt absolutely no guilt about the face that he was voyeur-ing on their conversation. He pretty much assumed they’d have both done the same.

“What d’ya mean?” Johns asked, lazily. Was he _high_? Dammit, that explained why he’d been so rattled, earlier.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Johns.” She jabbed him in the chest with a single finger, almost viciously. “What kind of Marshall are you? I checked the manifest. Xander was never listed as your prisoner. Hell, he signed onto the ship as a domestic passenger, _after_ you signed on! What the hell is really going on here?!”

He listed his jaw. “Lavelle Alexander Harris escaped from me on Artemis One, when his accomplice stabbed me. His coming on the Hunter-Gratzner was just a lucky break for me.”

“Lavelle,” she repeated.

“Yep,” he drawled.

“Dammit,” Xander mouthed.

“Isn’t that - “ she hesitated. “I thought they were all dead.”

“Could be a mother with a twisted sense of humour,” he shrugged. “Or it could be legitimate. Your guess is as good as mine, Captain, but either way, Xander _is_ my prisoner.”

“Was,” Riddick breathed in Xander’s ear.

Her face darkened again, and she crossed her arms. “He says you’re using him as bait.”

“And you listened to him?” he snorted.

“He makes a very compelling argument.” She muttered, crossing her arms over her chest. Xander could see how much she was sweating out here, in this heat, droplets slipping down her jaw, clinging to her damp curls. Even from here, she smelled of sweat and fear and anger. He was starting to understand why Riddick and Johns liked causing fear - it was downright intoxicating.

“And what argument is that?” he drawled. 

“That you’re keeping him around because he’s Riddick’s lover,” she said, fiercely. 

Lover? Xander had never used the word _lover_. He couldn’t see Riddick having something as touchy-feely relationship-y as a _lover_. He just had, well, the guy he was fucking.

Riddick smirked faintly. He seemed to agree without even hearing the argument.

“Ha!” Johns barked with laughter, leaning back against the rib again. He actually slid down the smooth surface, landing with a soft thump on the ground, and tugged a heavy glass bottle of whiskey out of the bag he’d been carting around. He uncapped it, and took a healthy swig before offering it to Fry. She shook her head, quickly. “Suit yourself,” he shrugged, setting it beside him on the sand. “Fry, he fed you the biggest line of bullshit in the verse, and you bought it.”

“No, Johns...”

“Think about it, Fry. Can you even _imagine_ the idea of Xander sleeping with a man like Riddick?”

“I can hardly say I know Riddick’s _tastes_ ,” she frowned.

“Vulnerable.” He grinned, seeming to warm up to this conversation. “Sure, he likes the survivor types, those too desperate to die, but fuck, Fry, he wants a little plaything he can bend and break and throw away. He’s a convict. He wants a prison bitch, too scared to do anything but what he tells them.

“Sounds like me anyway,” Xander breathed.

“He isn’t weak,” Fry uncrossed her arms.

“Exactly,” Johns pointed at Fry, and in his hiding place, Xander blinked in confusion. This didn’t even make sense. Johns had just _described_ him, perfectly. Exactly. It never occurred to him that, in the last three years, he had grown a backbone. He’d _never_ been weak, not really, he just had always been comparing himself to an almost impossible to measure yardstick - Jesse, Buffy, Angel, Riddick. “Xander’s no meek flower. He’d sooner figure out your weaknesses, and use them against you. Oh sure, he acts all weak, pretends to be some innocent kid. May have even _tried_ to pull that routine on Riddick, I dunno. But he’s no innocent kid, Fry.”

She huffed. “Still. Paris and el-Imam told me you tried to _kill_ him back there! You killed _Hassan_ trying to get him!”

“He was getting dangerous.”

“So you’d just _kill_ him?!”

“Have you seen where we _are_ , Carolyn?!” Johns spread his hands out. “We’re on a desert planet with no food and no water! We have two - not just one, Carolyn, but two - violent, dangerous criminals running around, and they both have a very good chance of killing us. For food, if nothing else. I don’t know about you, but I was trained to take the threats to your life out of the picture.”

She hesitated, looking torn. “Are you sure Xander’s dangerous?”

“He gets knife happy. Couple years back, he slashed a pilot’s throat. Got his friend to pilot to ship away. He’d been in custody at the time.”

_Yeah, custody of mercs,_ Xander thought. _Way to make it sound like I killed a cop, or something_.

“But his friend isn’t here. He can’t pilot, can he?”

Johns grinned, like a shark. “No. Xander can’t pilot.”

“Then he’s not likely to steal a ship we don’t even _have_ , is he?” She threw her hands up.

Johns pushed himself to his feet, leaving the whiskey bottle in the sand. “Well.”

“Well what?” Fry demanded.

“Xander can’t pilot. Riddick can.”

Fry paled under her sunburn.

“Just make sure we keep them apart, hm?” He brushed past her, shoulder bumping against hers. “Separately, they’re dangerous. Together... they’re an absolute killing machine.”

“I thought you said they weren’t lovers?” She followed him.

“Who said they have to be, to be dangerous? I was trying to prevent two of the most dangerous convicts in the verse from getting together and working together.”

“What should we do?” They were moving away, voices fading slightly due to the distance.

“Shoot on sight.”

Xander hissed, eyes wide. “He’s really beefing me up. I’m no convict, hell, I’m not really even dangerous!”

Riddick shifted beside him, fingers reaching down to snag the bottle of whiskey Johns had left behind, tugging it up. He uncapped it, and took a deep swig. “You killed that pilot. Were responsible for Revas’ death.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t make me, like, _you_!”

He snorted.

Xander smirked, running a hand through his hair. It was starting to feel like things would work out, again.

Riddick took another swig, then offered him the bottle.

He hesitated, then shook his head. “No. No thanks.”

He frowned. “When’s the last time you ate or drank?”

“No idea,” Xander admitted. “Before cryo.”

The other man offered the bottle again, frowning. “You need it.”

“It’ll just dehydrate me more,” he tried.

Riddick growled.

“Just... you drink it.” Xander pushed the bottle back towards. “Please. I’m sure we can find water somewhere.”

“There’s none in the settlement,” he said, but tossed back the last of the whiskey, draining it. He swung out of their hiding place, gathering up a handful of the sand, pouring it in the mouth of the bottle. Precaution in case Johns left it here as a trap. He dropped it back in place.

“Settlement?!” Xander repeated, swinging out after him, landing lightly on the gravel. “There are _people_ here?”

“No people,” Riddick considered the bright horizon, frowning. “Just the settlement.”

“But there _were_ people here?” he frowned.

“Yes,” Riddick reached out to snag the strap of Xander’s white tank top, tugging him closer. “You smell different, bitch.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Can we talk about that when we’re not in mortal danger?”

The man stepped closer to him, pinning him against the ribs behind them. Chest against Xander’s, he growled, “You may end up in mortal danger if you don’t explain.”

Xander swallowed. “Riddick...”

That was apparently not the right answer. He curled his fingers over Xander’s throat, deceptively quickly, pressing the pad of his thumb into the pulse point, firmly. The teenager did swallow and lift his jaw, gasping softly, but he didn’t respond with fear. “Pretty damn far from fear, really. “Come on, bitch...”

“Gladly,” he panted. “But this ain’t gonna help.”

He squeezed harder - then immediately released Xander’s throat when they heard distant shouting. “They’ve found the settlement.”

Panting softly, rubbing his slightly bruised throat, Xander asked, “Should we go find the settlement too?”

Riddick nodded, briefly, and started jogging towards the alleged settlement.

Xander followed, starting to realize the extent of stupid shit he was willing to do for this man. Run into the empty settlement where Johns and a group of angry settlers were hanging out? Oh yeah, seemed like an _excellent_ idea.

But they were doing it anyway.

“I’m going to need ‘It’s Riddick’s fault’ written on my gravestone,” he muttered, following him.

—

  
 

  
 

“This is completely wrong.”

Riddick didn’t look up at Xander’s statement. He was watching the whole small settlement from their vantage point. The others were gathered around a small ship - if one could even call it a _ship_ , really - and no one seemed to be keeping any kind of watch. But it wasn’t the idiocy of the survivors that was bothering him. 

It was the town.

It was empty, still as the tomb, to borrow an overdone cliche. Unbroken windows stared out at the stillness like the hollow eyes of skulls, and though they had given a valiant attempt to keep growing, the old food sources were withered and dry. Everywhere there were the abandoned bits and bobs and trappings of everyday life. It wasn’t like an escape. It was like an alien abduction.

“Mary Celeste ghost ship weirdness,” he muttered, shifting closer to the edge of the roof, peering down at the ground.

Riddick glanced at him, but didn’t say anything. 

Xander did, though.

“...are you seriously trying to make sure I’m not too close to the edge?”

He just gave him a dry look.

“You _are_! Oh my god, Riddick, seriously, I am not made of glass! You’ve been even worse than you were before, lately! Seriously. I’m not doing that whimpering thing, I’m not bleeding, I’m not in danger. Stick a clothespin on your nose, or something, so my new all ‘distress signally’ smell doesn’t bother you, and then we can both go back to normal, okay? Okay. Great.”

Riddick simply shrugged, and went back to watching the survivors, but Xander did notice that the other man’s tensed shoulders didn’t relax until he moved back from the edge.

Guess that overprotective thing was hard-wired into him.

_Great_.

“Okay, look, these people never left this planet.” Xander slapped his fist into his palm for emphasis, surprised by the sound of it in the unnatural stillness. “Something happened. But other than those giant things, I haven’t seen any bodies.”

“Old blood was spilled.”

Xander glanced at Riddick. Wearing the goggles still weirded him out, because they obstructed the edges of his vision, and they were so very dark he sometimes wondered if he was actually seeing everything he thought he was, or if some of it was an optical illusion caused by the sheer darkness of the lenses. Everyone and everything still glowed, though, even with the goggles. He swore he could _almost_ see the blood pumping under other’s skin. It was sort of eerie. “Where?”

He gave him a dull look.

“Right. If I can’t find it myself, I don’t deserve to find it. Right.” Xander rolled his eyes, and moved closer to the edge of the roof again. He sniffed at the air, but he couldn’t smell anything but dust and sand and rocks and the almost stinking putrid stench the air had, like a thousand rats had died and decayed behind the fridge. He’d only smelled that scent with _one_ rat before, but he supposed that if it was timed by a thousand, it would have smelled exactly like this planet did. “God, all I can smell is the stench of death. Oh, wait... _oh_. Death. Old blood.”

There was movement down in the streets, and Xander ducked down low behind the lip around the edge of the roof, considering it. Two of the children were moving about, trying to be stealthy. Jack and Ali, he thought.

“Jack shaved her head,” he said, blinking. “I think you have an admirer, Riddick.”

“Look at the boy,” he smirked.

Xander narrowed his eyes, blinking. Ali had removed his turban, and his hair hung in loose curls around his ears. He wore what looked like a makeshift pair of goggles, and seemed to be trying to sneak around with Jack.

“Good fucking lord,” he gaped at the sight. “They’re trying to be _us_.”

Riddick smirked, then moved to the edge of the roof, swinging himself off the edge of the roof. He didn’t even wait to see if Xander followed. For a man who was obsessively over-protective, Xander thought, as he swung over the edge of the roof and dropped to the ground, he was remarkably trusting that Xander would do as he was told. Or not told, really, as the case may be. He fell into step behind Riddick as they headed up the dusty little road, silently.

They looped around the building the children had focused on for their exploration, considering it. Jack was telling the other about all of the potentially cool stuff they might find, but it was Ali who found the sheet metal tear, and slipped inside.

“I’m going in through the broken skylight,” Xander murmured to Riddick. The other shot him a sharp look, but he ignored him gleefully - he wanted to explore too, dammit - and headed to the broken window.

It was broken enough that he figured he could fit through fairly easily without having to break any more, and hooking the chain that had kept him cuffed and led a few hours ago onto a handy metal pole welded to the roof, he squirmed through the opening, lowering himself in.

Xander had never been accused of over-thinking things. This is very important.

Because, as you may have noticed, Xander not only didn’t over-think this decision to lower himself through a broken skylight into the coring room where children were exploring, he hadn’t actually even thought about it at all. He’d just sort of acted on an impulse, and now he was doing something incredibly stupid.

He was about halfway to the floor when he realized this.

Ali was shifting things about, looking for anything useful as Jack had suggested, but that wasn’t what was now making Xander’s heart beat increase. There was a mass, to the left, high in the rafters, with Xander. A group of small bodies, hotter even than the scorching air around them. Moving, shifting. The more he or Ali moved, the more agitated they seemed to become. 

That alarmed Xander.

The fact that he could now smell nothing but the stench of old decay terrified him.

Ali, just playing as a child does, knocked something over, and the rest of the skylights slid open, flooding the cavernous room with sunlight.

There was a shriek that rose through the room, a thousand smaller voices joining together to create a howling wail that seemed to worm into the veins and marrow of their bones. The crowd of dark shapes erupted out of their little group, sweeping through the air.

Xander dropped to the ground the rest of the way, and threw himself in front of Ali.

He _wished_ he had a knife. The ulaks would have been even better, but any weapon other than just his hands and his nerves would have been greatly appreciated. He did snag a massive wrench, however, and as Ali screamed in terror, he swung like a baseball star, connecting the metal wrench with the small, softish winged bodies. Each hit gave him a satisfying thud-squish sound, but he wasn’t able to deflect them all. A few got through his swings, and where they struck, they slashed and cut, as though the creatures were made of razors. 

Ali let out a shriek behind him, and Xander spun to tug the boy in against his chest, curling around him, shielding him with his body.

There was a shotgun blast, then another, and Xander ducked them both lower, to make sure that neither of them were hit. The door slammed open, and Johns, guns a blazing (metaphorically, as Xander wasn’t exactly sure what the ‘a blazing’ part of that phrase actually meant, and John was not currently firing) burst into the coring room, holding up his rifle. His eyes latched onto Xander, and he took a half step forward.

And the flock of bat-like creatures swung towards the shadows Johns had created with the door, slashing at the man’s face and arms.

He howled, reeling back, already bleeding from a dozen deep cuts.

If these things were given long enough, they’d just tear Johns to shreds, little bloody ribbons of mercenary. By all accounts, Johns would deserve it, would absolutely warrant being torn to tiny pieces too small to identify. Xander might have even enjoyed it. Riddick sure would have.

But Giles had told him once that sometimes the best ally was an old enemy.

He shoved Ali to the floor, so he’d be completely out of the flight path of the things, and bolted across the small space between them, shoving an arm through the razor sharp animals, hooking it over Johns’ shoulders, and hauling him down. Thrusting the man to the sand, he swung hard at the mass with the wrench. Crushing at least three more, they abruptly swung as a mass away from him, and shot straight down through a deep hole in the ground, the one the stench came from.

As quickly as the swarm had attacked, they had stopped.

Xander straightened, and wasn’t entirely surprised when a soft thud to his left told him that Riddick had dropped down off the roof as well. Running his hand through his hair, he let the wrench slide from his fingers to rest the bottom on the ground. “You owe me, Johns,” he said at last.

The merc forced himself to his knees, panting. Blood was running down the side of his face, and he sort of looked like an escapee from a chainsaw slasher flick.

A low, ominous growl was the only warning Xander got that Riddick wasn’t pleased before the other snatched his arm in a bruising grip, tugging him over. Xander thumped against Riddick’s chest, and blinked at him as the man ran his fingers over his face, his shoulders, down his arms. It took him a long moment before he realized that Riddick was searching for any signs of injury, and assessing those he did find for seriousness. He went still, barely able to force himself to bite his tongue and not just run a commentary of what was going on as Riddick checked. He _did_ finally give into saying, “Well, am I going to die of blood loss, or not?” as Fry and the Imam dashed into the coring room, wide eyed.

Riddick’s answer to that question, apparently, was to lean closer and to run the flat of his tongue, like a soft rasp of sandpaper, up the side of Xander’s jaw and up to his hairline, cleaning the blood off.

Xander shuddered, clutching at the other’s arms. “Riddick...”

He pressed his lips firmly against Xander’s brow, just for a moment, then deliberately shifted him behind him, standing resolutely in front of him as he faced down the survivors, sternly.

Fry gaped at them for a moment, then turned to snarl at Johns. “How many other things have you lied to me about?”

He pulled himself to his feet, scowling. “I ain’t been lying to you, Carolyn...”

“ _They_ aren’t lovers?!” She waved an arm at Riddick and Xander, who had chosen to stand there instead of leaving. Xander had his reasons for waiting, and he sort of assumed Riddick did too. But they were standing close together, Riddick protectively in front of the other, shielding him with his own body, Xander standing close to him, a hand on the other’s shoulder blade. “Are you fucking _kidding_ me, Johns?!”

Xander smirked slightly.

“The boy saved your life, Marshall,” the Imam said, stepping forward, frowning. “There is space in every heart for repentance, but this young man has not acted as a ruthless killer.”

Baring his teeth, Johns pressed his hand against his side. There was red spreading beneath his palm, and Xander could smell the sharp iron scent of blood easily. “So the new plan is to, what? Just let them free?”

“They haven’t threatened us,” Shazza frowned. She’d slipped in behind the others with Paris, shortly after their arrival, though from the looks on their faces, Fry and the Imam hadn’t noticed them being there. “Fact, the only one here whose caused us any damage’s been _you_ , Marshall.”

“Hey now...” he started. “I’m doin’ my job.”

“They call what you do a ‘job’ now, Johns?” Xander arched a brow, and didn’t even mind when Riddick let out a low growl and pushed him more behind himself. To get a jib in on Johns? So worth it.

“The boy _has_ a point,” Paris agreed. “And he _has_ saved your life. Perhaps, considering the circumstances... might not mercy be the better part of valour?”

“You want the murderers walking around free?” he grimaced.

“So far,” Fry crossed her arms, “They’ve proved to be more concerned with out survival than _you_ have been, Marshall. I say if your bosses complain, then tell ‘em they died in the crash. If they’re stupid enough to start killing again after, then they’ll get caught again, won’t they? Besides,” Fry hesitated. “I could use a hand getting the fuel cells back here.”

Johns closed his eyes a moment, then nodded. “Fine. Your funeral.”

Fry actually grinned, briefly.

“Can I get some medical attention, now?” He grunted, grimacing as he pressed harder against his wound.

Xander bared his teeth for a moment, considering offering to help, but in his case, that might mean something other than helping him bandage his wound up. Yes, he’d saved the ungrateful bastard. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to rub sand in the wound.

But it was Shazza and Paris who helped the merc to sit down on a crate, and began caring for his side.

El-Imam stepped forward, and inclined his head respectfully to Riddick. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Riddick.”

He frowned slightly, but just nodded. 

As the Imam started telling him about something that had happened, Xander’s attention wandered. He didn’t wander, himself, because he was pretty sure that the way Riddick was acting, he’d have been tugged right back. But he sure let his mind wander. Jack was helping Ali bandage up the worst of the wounds he’d gotten - a cut above his left eye. Ironically, it seemed that those ugly goggles he’d donned had actually helped protect one of his eyes. Go figure. He _did_ have to grin when Jack stuck out her tongue, like she was going to attempt to imitate Riddick’s move, and Ali recoiled, gaping at her.

Turning around, he rested his palms on one of the old instrument panels that surrounded the massive boring hole (boring as in digging in the ground for samples, he snickered to himself, not just a dull hole) and peered down inside.

It was a deep, yawning mouth of darkness, dark enough even with the sunlight spilling in that he could _quite_ see.

Ducking under the panel, he shifted right to the edge of the hole, making sure he was fully in the shadow - just in case - before he lifted the goggles, setting them on his forehead. Light flooded his senses, threatening for just a moment to blind him, but he shifted further into the shadows and narrowed his eyes, trying to see what he thought he’d - there. There it was.

Shoving his goggles back on, Xander stood, and hollered, loud enough to make everyone jump, “Anyone got a flare or something?”

Johns did, apparently, and everyone watched as Xander leaned over, tossing the flare down.

As the green flames tumbled through the air and into the hole, it lit an increasing number of skeletons, pale green light slipping over the white where it stood out against the stones. They had been stripped completely clean of any trace of flesh or muscle, and all that was left were the off-white bones. There had to be the remains of at least fifty people here, some adults, some tiny. The flare clattered to land on the bottom, on a stack of bones that had been scattered haphazardly across the stones.

“No one left this planet,” Xander said, again.

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander felt sort of useless. 

Perched on a massive old storage crate, he looked out over the landscape, quietly, hugging himself slightly as he sat. There were too many things jumbling through his mind, making everything a confusing mess, and was mostly dealing with these things by flatly refusing to think about them. It wasn’t really an effective solution, but it _was_ a solution.

Riddick had started helping Fry with jury-rigging the little skiff they’d found to use the ships power cells, though Johns had protested _that_ decision mightily, and the Imam and his boys had roped Jack into helping with trying to get the water pump working. Paris was holding tools for Shazza, who was repairing the sand cat, which was what she called the thing that sort of looked like a cross between a jeep and a four wheeler. Paris wasn’t being terribly _helpful_ , in the holding of those tools, but he was being more helpful than Xander was. He was inept with repairs and was probably just more likely to hurt himself, anyway, so...

So he sat, and “kept watch”. What he was watching for, he didn’t really know. The creatures didn’t ever come into the sunlight. Seemed an odd environment for a nocturnal creature to adapt in.

“I suppose you’re proud of yourself.”

Xander didn’t even blink, just kicked out at the air, lightly. “Actually, Johns, I am. I think I’ve done a lot of things lately that I totally deserve to feel proud of myself for.”

He huffed, and leaned on the crate itself, though at the bottom, crossing his arms. “I wasn’t actually planning on killing you.”

“I figured,” Xander shrugged. “As long as you haven’t been paid for Riddick, you probably need me around.”

He snorted. “I don’t always need you.”

“You killed a kid, last time.” When Johns glanced up at him, he smirked. “What, you thought I _wasn’t_ in the shadows, watching the whole thing go down? I didn’t just end up on the Hunter-Gratzner by _accident_ , Johns. So yeah, I know that you don’t always need me there. But I also know that when I _am_ there, you are always able to catch Riddick much easier. Hell, you caught him this last time because he knew that if he didn’t go, I was going to put up a stink. Riddick seems to think I do stupid things.”

“You _do_ do stupid things.”

“I know that, but you don’t really need to _support_ him on that decision,” Xander grumped a little, crossing his arms. “I do enough stupid shit without people realizing I am.”

Johns snorted.

Crinkling his nose, Xander shifted, and kept kicking at the air, his boots adding to the weight of his feet, so that they dragged slightly when he did. “You actually think we’re all gonna get off this planet, Johns?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” He shifted to look up at him. “You and Riddick planning on killin’ the rest of us off?”

“ _No_ ,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s just that... there’s something _off_ about this planet, Johns. Even you have to be able to feel it, it’s obvious. Yeah, I think I might feel it more, because I can _smell_ it, but even you have got to be able to tell that there is something just plain _wrong_ about this place. It - it gives me the wiggins. These people didn’t lock themselves in the coring room for _fun_. They had some reason to lock themselves in there, and it might have been the same thing that got Zeke. Maybe the same thing that tried to get us.” He hesitated. “Are we sure the suns never set?”

“There are _three_ of them, Xander.” He waved at the sky. “Doesn’t look like they’re going to set anytime soon, does it?”

“Yeah, actually...” He stood, shading his eyes with a hand as he frowned off at the horizon. A moment later, he leapt off the crate, ignoring Johns’ shouts to wait up as he barrelled down the streets as fast as he could, heart pounding as he leapt over a row of barrels to skid up to the skiff. “ _Fry_!”

Carolyn slipped out of the skiff, ducking under the bulkhead, looking surprised to see him. “Xander? What’s the matter?”

Riddick slipped out behind her, frowning slightly. 

Xander didn’t even have time to register the jealous pang that hit him. _Mine_. “Do we have any equipment working, for scans, or anything?”

She glanced back in the ship. “We’ve got sys scans going, yeah, but nothing beyond the ship yet - “

“No, that won’t help.” His heart beat just wouldn’t slow down. “We need to know the calender, really...”

“There was an orrery?” she suggested, frowning.

“A what?” He blinked at her.

“You know, a model of the area. The planets.” She tried to demonstrate what she was describing with her hands. “A model of the planets, show the cycles of the moons and suns...”

“Yes.” He pointed at her, firmly. “ _Yes_. Show me where this was.”

They seemed to pick up everyone on their way, and the whole little motley crew of survivors was squeezed into the small room. There was a massive metal and ceramic model of the solar system on the table, with little solar powered lights to represent the three suns shining feebly on the model. “Does anyone know what year it is?” Xander asked, as he fiddled with the orrery - cool word, if you asked him, though a little hard to say - and its controls on the bottom. There was a date counter, showing how many years the solar cycle took to complete itself. 

“Not exactly,” Fry frowned, glancing at the display. “It would depend on the U.Y....”

“Right, right.” He frowned. “Looks like the complete cycle here is twenty six Universal Years... wait. Shazza, you were poking around in those boxes up in the coring room, said something about a year. Do you remember what it was?”

“No,” she admitted, shaking her head.

“I do,” Fry perked up a little. “Yeah, I remember the year.”

“Johns, you still have your calender?” Xander grinned at him.

He glowered at him, but pulled the small square device out of one of the pockets of his belt, handing it over to Fry. She typed in what she remembered of the date, then handed it over to Xander. 

“Thanks,” he murmured, frowning as he played with the controls. “Looks like whatever happened to those people happened twenty-two years ago. So if we set it to twenty two years...” He watched as the orrery spun of its own accord, and slowly, all of the planets and the suns lined up, neatly, in a perfect line. “Damn.”

“That is an eclipse.” The Imam stepped forward, tracing the imaginary line between the planets. “One sun cut off by a moon, two suns cut off by a fellow planet...”

“They hid in the coring room.” Riddick said, making the others glance at him. “Those animals stay to the dark. They thrived in the darkness, and every human on this planet died.”

“Yeah.” Xander nodded, and pushed the little planet they were standing on forward. It moved in tandem with the other planets for a long piece before finally they broke free, and he kept pushing, moving it around and around. He was watching the year tracker, frowning, watching as it ticked higher and higher. Finally, it reached twenty and the planets started moving closer together, but when it ticked over to twenty-two years, the planets lined up again. “Every twenty years, there’s an eclipse.”

“...but the suns are shining as brightly as ever,” Paris argued. 

Xander glanced at the window, hesitating. “You sure about that?”

Standing out in the sand a few minutes later, the whole group was remarkably silent as they watched the slow crest of a planet appearing over the horizon. It was a massive planet, based on what they could see, with two rings that didn’t quite travel the same way, but instead overlapped each other. It was moving inexorably across the sky, and already they could feel the air cool slightly as it tried to move up enough to block off the sun. 

“We need to get the power cells to fuel the ship.” Fry said. 

“We’d better get moving, then.” Shazza frowned. “The sand cat is solar. If that blocks off the sun...”

“Let’s move,” The Captain agreed, and broke into a run with the other woman, running towards the sand cat. The other’s followed, though Riddick grabbed Xander’s arm, almost too tight, making him hesitate for a moment.

“What? Aren’t we in a hurry?” Xander hissed.

“If anything happens,” Riddick rumbled, quietly. “Don’t save Johns again.”

He blinked at him, then grinned. “Oh, don’t worry, I think he’s more than exceeded his saving quota. I’m pretty much at the point where I’m tempted to drop him into one of the holes, let those massive beasts down there eat him. Did you know he thinks they’re _all_ like those tiny ones were? I heard him talking to Shazza about it. Thinks the little ones got Zeke. I figured telling them that I could hear _big_ versions under the ground would just freak them out, but - “

The other pressed his hand across Xander’s mouth, cutting off the babble, and said, “You still owe me an explanation.”

He cleared his throat, and nodded. 

Riddick nodded, and broke into a run again, tugging Xander along with him. The sand cat skidded in their direction, and he actually shoved Xander up onto it before swinging himself on using the roll cage. It hadn’t even slowed.

They didn’t have time for slowing.

  
 

\---

  
 

The other planet was shifting across the suns at a steady pace, slowly, easily blocking the light bit by bit. Under their feet, as they leapt off of the sand cat and scrambled to get the fuel cells from the ship, Xander could feel the dull rumble of creatures moving under the surface. Waking up.

He leapt up the ramp into the ship proper, dashing towards the fuel cells with something of a frenzied rush. 

The others were just as rushed.

Fry jerked one of the batteries free, and handed it to Xander. He nearly dropped it immediately, and only just caught it. Flushed, he tossed it over his shoulder and dashed outside, dropping it on the back of the sand cat. Riddick dropped two more beside his a moment later, but his eyes were on the sky, not on the cells.

Xander looked where the other’s eyes angled, and swallowed, hard.

As they stood in silence, watching, the final edge of the planet slid between them and the suns, and completely cut them out. The sky began to rapidly go black.

“We have to _go_!” Shazza cried, sounding panicked. “Before we can’t!”

“The sun’s already gone, Shazza,” Xander said softly, looking up at the swiftly disappearing light and seriously wondering if he could take off his goggles, now. “Even if we can catch some, we’ll never make it there in time.”

“Well, we gotta _try_!” She howled.

The engine died completely.

Shazza slammed her hands against the steering wheel, howling her frustration and rage.

The rumbling beneath their feet had become a roar now, a roiling boil that was making little pebbles skitter across the sand. A sort of almost song seemed to start somewhere, a high pitched warbling that slid across their skin and sent shudders up their spines. A distant rumbling off in the distance alerted them to some change.

He just couldn’t quite see what was happening, so Xander stepped away from the others and tugged his goggles up, setting them against his forehead as he looked in the direction of that rumbling.

The bat like creatures from the coring room were pouring out of the cracks in the ground, from the top of those massive stone spires. They swept in spiralling loops, twisting and spinning, creating intricate patterns against the black sky with their dully glowing bodies - but they weren’t really glowing, were they, that was just their blood pumping hard and fast and blue-tinged under their skin, warming them to the point where they glowed like the other survivors did. A familiar shoulder bumped into his, but Xander didn’t - couldn’t - look away from the creatures erupting into the sky. He just leaned into Riddick’s side, lightly, enjoying the majesty of those deadly destructive things coming to life. The stone pillars crumbled, and bigger ones - _much_ bigger ones - tumbled out, taking wing.

“What do you see?” Paris called, voice catching.

“Beautiful,” Riddick breathed.

“You seeing the same thing I’m seeing?” Xander asked, eyes wide. “It’s the most amazing thing...”

“To the storage compartment!” Fry ordered, and they began to run.

Xander swore, realizing that in his admiration of the sights he’d sort of gotten distracted from the fact that these things full on meant to make a meal of them, and spun, dashing towards the other survivors.

The high pitched songs of the creatures swung over them and a frantic Jack screamed, “Get _down_!”

He hit the ground, hard, his trip down faster than he’d really meant it to be, mostly because a “helpful” hand on his shoulder had pushed him down.

Shazza and Ali hit the ground just feet away, just in time, too, as thousands of the sharp little things screamed over their heads, in a rushing horde.

They screamed off in a wide bank, and for a moment, all was still.

Shazza half rose, but she couldn’t see what Xander saw. He grabbed her ankle, hard, holding her down. “Wait!” he cried.

She glanced back at him, eyes widening in alarm, but she dropped back to the gravel.

Ali didn’t.

He pushed himself to his feet, and bolted towards the storage container, just trying to get to his Imam and Suleiman. 

“Ali! Stay down!” Xander cried, but it was too late.

The flock swung back towards them, and though the boy threw up his hands to try and protect his face, he never had a chance. They swarmed around him, slashing and tearing, and Xander wasn’t sure if the others could make out what was happening exactly, but he could see all too clearly when the little things _tore him apart_ , and carried the pieces away.

Riddick hauled him up the moment the swarm was past, but Xander was already moving, helping the woman get up, too, until all three of those left got up to the storage cells.

The Imam looked grim. After all, one of his charges had just been brutally killed. It was understandable.

The moment they were inside, Fry slammed the door shut, and they braced themselves against the rattling of the creatures inside, slamming on the door.

It went still, then, and the survivors just looked at each other, breathless.

Fry spoke first.

“What the hell happened to your eyes, Xander?”

Everyone turned to look at him, and he blinked owlishly at them. He had no pupils. Instead, his eyes were the same deep dark wells that reflected into silver blue brightness the moment they caught even the faintest hint of light that Riddick’s eyes were.

“What?” Xander blinked. “What’s wrong with my eyes?”

  
 

\---

  
 

They had neither the time nor the security in which to allow Xander the freak out he wanted to have. He wanted to hyperventilate, or flail, or grab Riddick by the shoulders and demand to know why the hell he had apparently inherited his eyes and ‘I thought this was from a surgery, not that it was some freaky space STD!’. Instead, he barely had time for a quick glance at his reflection in the glass of one of Paris’ whiskey bottles, an answer of “I have no idea,” to Fry, then they had to move into another unit.

The beasts were coming closer.

Xander helped the Imam shove a massive crate against the door, trying to basically lock themselves in. 

“What light do we have?” Fry called. 

“Cutting torch?” Shazza held it up. “A light, Paris has a lighter...”

“How long will this damned darkness _last_?” Paris panted, eyes wide and scared. “Is this just a night we must last through, or...?”

“The model seemed to imply more than a year,” The Imam frowned.

Suleiman, the last of the Imam’s students, whimpered, and shifted closer to the man, sort of hiding in the folds of his robes. The boy would have been perfectly content to disappear into them.

“This container won’t keep them out, long.” Xander spoke up. It was weird, the way people were looking at him. “You saw how they were punching through the metal. We need to move further in.”

No one moved, they just sort of looked at each other.

“Hello, people?” Xander threw up his hands. “Move in?”

“You really think they’re gonna listen to you?” Johns drawled. He was sitting on a crate, leaning back into the wall. There was blood staining his shirt, fresh spreading from the exertion of the running. “You’ve found yourself in the ranks of the freaks, Xander. Anyone sees those eyes, they know it.”

“Well, I - “ He tugged his goggles down, to hide his eyes, then swore when he realized that it was too dark in the storage container and now he was pretty much blind. He tugged them back up, and grumbled slightly. “Fine. I can’t even hide them. Look, so I have... not normal eyes. I don’t know why. I plan to find _out_ why, but until I know... just pretend they’re still normal, or something.”

“Or we can stop looking a gift horse in the mouth,” Fry stepped forward. “You can see in the dark, right?”

Xander hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.”

“So can Riddick.” She looked back at the man, who was standing half in the shadows, arms crossed as he watched them all. “So with two people that see what’s coming toward us, we could gather up what lights we can find on the ship, get the fuel cells we need, and go.”

“Excuse me, did you _see_ those creatures?!” Parish protested. “No thank you!”

“Well, they’re going to get in here to us, soon,” Xander frowned, then glanced back, sharply, at a skittering sound that was too close to be outside. “If they’re not already in here.”

“Scatter.” Johns ordered.

They obeyed.

Xander could have grabbed the others and shook them. Following Johns’ orders might be one of the dumbest things they could do right now, really. Guy might be a good hunter, but he was a shit survivor.

Still, Xander ducked away from the group and was more relieved than he maybe should have been when Riddick’s hand caught his arm and tugged him behind what had once been a harness for cargo straps. This corner was absolutely pitch black, darker than the inside of a bantha raider (oh yes, he went there) but Xander could still see the other, could still make out his features. It wasn’t as simple as just _seeing_ had always been. It was like Xander had multiple _layers_ of vision, now, as though he was putting different filters in front of his vision, depending on what he was looking for, and everything seemed a little... fish eyed. Riddick glowed faintly in his vision, and the other man’s eyes were like a beacon, a glowing soft blue. They were... comforting.

“Riddick...” he reached up to set his hand on the other’s chest again, swallowing. Their hearts were beating together again. “Why the hell do I need the same eyes as you?”

“I don’t know.” Riddick frowned. He looked as displeased by this puzzle as Xander was. 

“I thought you said you had surgery for this!” he hissed.

“I did. In Butcher Bay.”

Xander hesitated. “Wait, right before I got there? I thought you’d had it for years or something... I - how’d he do it? Because I don’t think my eyes just did this on their own!”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You... don’t know?” That threw him for a loop. He’d just sort of assumed that if Riddick was going to be _having_ the surgery, he’d at least have the slightest idea of how it had worked. “All I know was that I was in the hold, where it was dark, and I was trying to focus on finding you, and then Johns took me outside and I couldn’t see, the light fucking _hurts_.”

“And these?” He tapped the edge of the goggles.

“Johns gave them to me.” He frowned, ducking further into the shadows when he heard the skittering of claws on metal a little piece away. He couldn’t see anything warm that direction, but if he looked behind them he could see both the warmth of other human bodies and of one much larger body. Something was in the container with them. He should have been terrified. He actually found that he was more excited by the potential for some kind of fight. Made his blood sing.

“He knew,” Riddick growled. “Do you see it?”

“The one on the top of the crate?” he nodded. “It’s eating something. One of the wrecked passengers, maybe?”

“Likely.” Riddick agreed, and eased a shank out of his belt. It was made of a piece of the wreckage, and fairly crude, but Xander could tell it was as good as a razor. 

“We need to get your ulaks back,” Xander murmured, pulling the small knife Nina had given him from out of the top of his book. Johns hadn’t really done any useful searching, in order to find it. Groping that he passed off as frisking, yes. Proper searching, no. “You don’t look right without a proper blade.”

“Talk when it’s dead,” he smirked, then started hurrying towards the crate where the thing was perched, moving silently.

Xander grinned, and followed.

His heart pounding with the thrill, the anticipation of the hunt, Xander padded lightly through the debris on the ground, stalking the creature. He was already anticipating sinking his blade into it, of destroying it utterly. The idea of just trying to observe it _had_ occurred to him, that maybe he should act somewhat mature and just observe the thing first, like Giles might do. But he wanted to hunt that thing down - and he wanted to hunt it down _with_ Riddick. For some reason, that was important.

Clambering up onto a smaller piece of debris, Xander steadied himself for a moment. The creature was close now, close enough that he could have reached out and actually just touched it. It was eating, tearing pieces out of what little was left of one of the crash victims. Its mouth was too small, really, for its size, and it had to just take out huge chunks.

Riddick pounced first.

He landed on top of the beast, jerking it’s head back by the massive bone spires that emerged from the sides of its head, like a bone version of a hammerhead shark, ignoring its squeals of anger and panic as it struggled against him. Somewhere, one of the survivors was screaming at the sounds, having no idea what the sound was but assuming it was bad, but Riddick didn’t even hesitate, just kept pulling the thing’s head back, slamming his foot down on one of the reaching, clawed hands, to prevent it from scratching at him.

Xander grinned, wolfishly, and leapt up onto the crate beside Riddick, flicking his knife up.

Riddick tugged the thing’s head just a little bit further back, baring the throat for him - and Xander bolted forward, slashing the knife across it, splitting the thick, leathery skin, blue blood bubbling out over the tip of his knife, spilling down its throat and chest, onto the body below it. The creature squealed and writhed and struggled, straining against Riddick’s arms. His muscles were corded strong under the skin, tight and straining slightly, but he was grinning viciously, teeth bared, blue blood splattering against his skin. 

Xander laughed softly, catching some of the blood in his hands as the creature stopped fighting, slowly, and slumped in Riddick’s arms. “Their blood smells odd.”

He let the body slump to the top of the crate, and Riddick shifted closer to him, sniffing curiously at the blood Xander had pooled in his palms. “Don’t drink that,” he ordered, frowning. 

“Aww,” he pouted, playfully, but wiped his bloody palms on his jeans, leaving blue bloody hand prints behind on his thighs. The blood was still hot, but not as hot as his own skin, so when he looked down at himself, he could see the paler hand prints against the red glowing on his own body. “But I really _like_ drinking blood.”

Riddick smirked, and leaned over to kiss the other’s forehead, firmly. “See the other one?”

Xander frowned, and peered around the container, thoughtfully. “There are three other ones, Riddick. What are you talking about, other _one_?”

“Good,” he swung off the top of the storage crate, and started creeping silently through the shadows. 

Grinning, amused by the lameness of Riddick’s little “test”, Xander swung himself off after him, and slipped after him. Creeping through the shadows, he marvelled at how sensitive his eyes were now - he could actually see the light trace of Riddick’s footsteps as he walked, the quickly fading warmth of his boot prints. It was a strange sort of feeling - why was he even able to _do_ this? 

Riddick stepped in the shadows, leaning against a storage crate, half hidden. Xander stepped in beside him, leaning against the other’s arm, quietly, considering what the other was looking at. There were three of the creatures on a high shelf above their heads, ripping and tearing at another body as they ate, but Xander couldn’t quite make out if the cold body they were tearing up was another passenger that had been killed in the crash or if it was one of the other creatures. 

There was a crash to their left, and every one of the creatures’ heads flicked up, startled.

Suleiman stumbled up to the crate they were leaning against, and when Xander grabbed the front of the kid’s robes to stop him from running straight into the mess of the monsters, he yelped, startled. 

“Shut up,” Xander hissed, quickly. “Don’t move.”

He shook, eyes wide as he looked up at them. Xander supposed it must have been an alarming thing to see, really, the two of them standing there half in the shadows, both of their eyes glowing dull blue and looking something like an animal’s eyes. He supposed he and Riddick really _were_ sort of animals. The scent of urine flooded the room, then, and Xander crinkled his nose, shifting his feet away from the boy, just in case. 

“Don’t _move_ ,” Riddick said, quickly. 

Suleiman didn’t listen - he bolted, trying to get away from the creatures that he could see. 

Moving meant that the moment he bolted, the creatures saw him, and all three leapt off the top of the storage container, and leapt on him, tearing him apart. 

“Suleiman!” The Imam howled from around one of the corners, having just come around the corner as the creatures leapt on him. He ran forward, clearly hoping to save the last of his charges, his boys, maybe even his _sons_ , Xander wasn’t sure what the relationship between the Imam and the boys was, from the creatures. But Xander wasn’t surprised when Riddick shifted past him to catch the Imam’s arms, pulling him up short. The man was going to get injured - or worse - if he managed to get there. “ _No_ , Suleiman...”

“Run,” Riddick ordered, firmly, pushing the Imam back. “Back to the others. _Now_.”

He hesitated, looking torn. 

“ _Now_!” He hissed. 

The man nodded, and spun, dashing towards the other survivors. His prayer beads rattled on his belt as he ran, and naturally all three of the creatures looked up, sharply, howling in those high pitched shrieks of theirs as they arched up, ready to launch themselves after the man.

Riddick moved forward, first, leaping on one of the animals, tearing into it, slashing its throat as he threw it away. The other two shrieked and leapt on him.

Xander howled, leaping into the fray. Were he smart, he might have used a blade (like the blade in his _hand_ ) or done _something_ other than just wrapping his arm around one of the animal’s necks and ripping it back off of Riddick, gripping the muscled neck hard as he could, jerking it off of the other man. Were it a human, it would have been easy to break its neck and snap its spinal cord, killing it quickly, but the creature was huge, it was too big and too strong and its physiology didn’t exactly lend itself to its neck being broken. But desperation and rage and fury was a powerful thing, and Xander threw it back onto the ground, and slammed his hand straight through the creature’s rib cage, ripping its heart - or some semblance of a heart, whatever this creature had - right out, and threw it aside. 

The other man was looking at him, seriously. There was blood on his face and hands, almost the same colour as his eyes, and he considered Xander seriously. 

Panting, he murmured, “You all right?”

“Impressed.” Riddick shifted forward, sliding his hands over Xander’s jaw and face, his shoulders. He was frowning slightly as he checked him over, sliding his hands down his chest, checking for injury. 

Xander shifted back, quickly, and cleared his throat. “I get a little over-protective too, sometimes. That thing was gonna hurt you.”

“It was gonna eat me,” he said, seriously.

“Yeah, it probably would have,” he snorted, but shifted back even further when Riddick’s hand drifted towards his chest again, to finish his check. “Look, there’s at least one more in here. I can hear it. We need to get out of here before it gets close enough to Johns and he starts shooting again. Because he _will_ , you know he will.”

He nodded, and stood properly. And then, to Xander’s surprise, offered him his hand.

Xander slowly took it, letting the other tug him to his feet.

Riddick dropped his hand, and started moving through the container, quietly. They moved together through the darkness, silently, and even though he could see him perfectly in the darkness because of whatever the hell had happened to his eyes, he did still rest his hand on the base of the other’s spine, fingers curled in his tank top again, just like he always had. He liked doing it, as stupid as it was. 

There was a sound behind them, and Xander spun to find himself face to face with one of the creatures.

“Riddick?” Before Xander could say a thing about the creature being there, or even let the other know that it was close, Fry emerged from one of the overturned stacks of cargo, flicking her flashlight up, startled. 

Riddick let out a sharp short cry, and dropped like a stone.

Xander’s fingers were still tangled in the other’s shirt, and he toppled with him, startled and shocked, leaving the space between Fry and the creature open. It meant that the flashlight beam actually hit the animal, instead of flashing in Riddick’s eyes and blinding him. The skin bubbled and boiled under the beam, and the creature screamed, writhing and flailing. She gasped, but kept the flashlight on it, startled when the creature tumbled to the ground, still.

“Riddick?!” Xander asked, sitting up, eyes wide. “Are you all right?!”

“Keep the lights out of my eyes,” he snarled, shifting up to his feet again, teeth bared. 

Fry cleared her throat, and nodded. “The light hurts it.”

The three of them shifted closer to the limp animal body, watching as its skin bubbled under the flashlight beam. 

“Is it dead?” she asked, quietly.

Xander glanced at the woman, considering her for a moment. He liked Fry. She was rough and tumble and stronger than Johns had been giving her credit for, but with a beautiful little broken edge of vulnerability that was delicious. Was he not so enmeshed with Riddick, he totally would have been awkward teenaged boy flirting with her. She was gorgeous and brilliant and capable, like Buffy was, only not as arrogant about it like Buffy would have been. More _humble_ , perhaps. But he didn’t want to scar her. “No. It’s not dead. You might want to look away.”

She shook her head, tightening her jaw. “No.”

He frowned, and glanced at Riddick. The other man looked calm, but he was watching Fry too. 

Xander dropped to his knees, pressing his knee down on the thing’s chest, firmly, and slammed the blade he had been carrying around, Nina’s blade, straight into the side of the creature’s neck, watching as it bolted up, then slammed back down, hard. 

He sighed, and stood up, running his hand through his hair. Glancing back at Fry, he winced.

She looked pale and sort of sick. But she wasn’t freaking out, and she wasn’t running. She was standing tall and stern, and pointing the flashlight at the ground. “We need to get out of this container. We’re just hiding like rats, and waiting for them to get to us and eat us one by one. We need to go to the ship, get all of the lights we have, and get back to the settlement.”

“Johns won’t like that,” Xander cleared his throat. “So get ready for that.”

“Fuck Johns,” Riddick snapped.

“I _so_ agree with that,” he pointed at his companion, grinning. “But I’m just warning you that we’re possibly going to be facing gunfire again.”

He shrugged, and rested his hand against the back of Xander’s neck for a moment. 

Fry pulled herself up a little straighter, firmly, baring her teeth for a moment. “I’m the captain of this goddamn wreckage of a ship. And Johns is just a Marshall with an attitude and an itchy trigger finger. I will make damn sure that he doesn’t protest. Because I will shoot him myself, if I have to.”

“He’s not a Marshall,” Xander leaned back into Riddick’s palm. The other man was half holding him up, now. 

“What do you mean?” She frowned, glancing at him.

“He’s a merc,” Riddick smirked. “A merc with a tin badge and a fake uniform. He’s been hunting me down for years.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” she snarled.

“Yeah,” Xander sighed, running his hand through his hair again. Between cryo for almost two years and the amount of blue blood that had been splattered onto him, his hair was a complete knotty, greasy mess. “He’s a dick on a power trip. And he wants to make our lives living hell.”

“Well, _I’m_ the captain now.” Fry lifted her jaw, stubbornly. “We’re leaving this planet the best way we can. Now.”

  
 

\---

  
 

It had been fairly “easy”, comparatively, to dart out of the storage container and make their way across to the to the wreck of the ship. There was a lot of light left in the wreck of the cabin, mostly because the fuel cells were still running, lighting the lines that ran through the ship, and the animals were mostly avoiding it because of that fact. Sure, they did get dive bombed by one of the animals as they fled over there, but they were able to get inside, easily. 

Pulling down the long lines of lights, they had started gathering everything that created any kind of light in the centre of the ship, readying for the trip, building a sledge to cart both the lights and the fuel cells. 

Xander ducked under a low metal beam, one that had once been across the ceiling, and dug into the small storage space that had been under his cryo pod. He pulled out a rucksack that he’d purchased in the little market outside the docks two years ago, and checked it quickly, to make sure that he had the ulaks still inside it. He did, thank god, so he stood, tossing it over his shoulder, and unwrapped the protein bar he’d kept shoved in there. Thank god they didn’t go bad. 

He was about to take a bite when Riddick snatched it from his fingers.

“Oi!” He yelped, displeased. “I was going to _eat_ that, Riddick! I’m kind of absolutely starving here, and if I am expected to carry any of this stuff, I have to eat _something_. Got it?”

He sniffed at the protein bar, frowning. 

“Look, if you’re hungry, I have another one in my bag...” he sighed, and tugged his backpack back over his shoulder, digging in it, flushed. “Eat up, Riddick.”

The other frowned, but offered the protein bar back to Xander, instead.

He hesitated, but took it back, and climbed up into the cryo pod, sitting on the edge of the floor as he leaned on the glass door, trying to get a bit of rest. He was really hoping that he would manage to get himself rested enough that he would be able to make this run. His whole body was starting to ache. He did start eating the protein bar, chewing, happily. It wasn’t as good as water would have been, but at least it was _something_. “Here,” he held the rucksack towards Riddick. “Your ulaks are in here.”

The other flipped the top of the bag open, reaching inside, and drew the bladed weapons out. He checked the edges of the blades, and nodded, hooking them in his belt again. It was an almost instinctive thing.

“So.” He considered him, thoughtfully, chewing. “Do you think we’re all going to make it off this planet?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.” He snorted, closing his eyes, and finally took another bite of his protein bar. Even closing his eyes didn’t seem the same as it had before. It used to be that when he closed his eyes, all he saw was blackness. Now, he closed his eyes, and he could see the dull red glow of his own blood, pulsing slightly as it shifted through the minuscule veins in his eyelids, and he could see vague movement beyond his eyelids, a shadow where Riddick was.

There was a shift of movement beside him, and he opened a single eye to watch Riddick sit beside him in the base of the cryo pod, quietly. The man looked serious, which was a little frightening. He’d learned to gauge the levels of Riddick seriousness, and this was heavier than usual.

“Uh oh,” he blinked, taking another bite, and talking through the mouthful of “food”. “That’s serious Riddick look. What’s the serious Riddick look for? What’d I do to deserve serious Riddick look?”

“What are you hiding from me?”

Xander groaned, and slumped back in the pod, nibbling on the edges of the bar, nervously. He wasn’t even going to try and pretend that he _wasn’t_ hiding something from Riddick, because he’d learned that hiding from him never managed to work out. It was like the other could _smell_ the lies off of him. So he didn’t try. But he did shift back in the pod a little, getting more comfortable. “Have you noticed our hearts beat together?”

Riddick frowned, brows furrowed, those silver bright eyes focusing on him. But he did nod. 

“Do you know _why_ they do that? Cause I’ve been trying to figure that out. It’s been kind of bothering me. Because every time I get near you, I hear it pounding pounding pounding away, and they sound exactly the same. Even when I freak out and panic and act like an idiot, yours gets louder and faster too.”

He nodded, and reached up to rest his hand on the inside of Xander’s thigh, frowning. He could feel his heartbeat through his pants, through his skin, but something wasn’t quite right about the heartbeat, even though it was the same as his. 

“Yeah, so... why do they do that? They didn’t do that before.”

Riddick shrugged.

“Johns says I’m turning into you,” he murmured, taking another bite of the protein bar, then leaned forward to offer the last piece to the other man. Riddick just smirked and opened his mouth, and Xander snickered, popping it into the other man’s mouth. The convict almost bit his fingertips, but he just tugged them back, wiggling his fingers playfully at him. He was almost as fast as Riddick, now, sometimes. “He says that the longer I spend time with you, the more I’m turning into you.”

“Johns is full of shit,” he smirked, chewing on the last of the piece. “But I don’t think that’s a problem.”

He snorted, licking the residue of the protein bar off his fingertips. “I look like shit bald.”

“Don’t touch the hair,” Riddick growled. 

Xander smirked, amused by the other’s growl. He liked when Riddick got a little growly-possessive. It sort of made him feel like he mattered, somehow. “The others are probably freaking out. Think we might want to go check on how they’re coming along, if they’re ready to leave or not?”

“Johns is probably dosing himself,” He frowned, but reached forward, idly, to slide one of Xander’s greasy curls behind his ear. “This doesn’t count as our _talk_.”

“I know. I don’t want to freak you out til after we get off this planet.” He slid forward, and pressed his lips firmly to the other’s, just for a moment, then slid back. “I promise I’ll tell you after we get off of this planet, okay?”

Riddick curled his fingers in the front of his tank top, jerking him closer to kiss him again, harder, firmly, then finally let him go.

Xander whimpered slightly, disappointed for the kiss to end, and pouted slightly when Riddick stood and ducked under the beam again. He grabbed his rucksack from where Riddick had left it, and tugged it on, following him. Ducking under the beam himself, he smirked when he realized that Riddick was waiting for him, and fell into step behind him when the other man headed down through the now-dark remains of what was left, and out onto the sand, where the others were gathered. 

There was a sledge set up, with the generator sitting in the middle, and several fuel cells piled on board. Those gathered around it were holding ropes attached to the sledge, and the long tubes of lights were looped around them. 

“Dude, we going to a rave?” Xander grinned, scooping up one of the light tubes, waving it around a little, wiggling it through the air, leaving blue streaks through the darkness. 

Riddick snorted, and tugged Xander away from the sledge and the light tubes. 

“Aww... I don’t get to play with the fun glow sticks?” he pouted.

“You can see in the dark.” He said firmly. “You don’t need ‘glow sticks’.”

He snickered. “You just don’t want me to hang out with Fry. You think she likes me? I think she likes me. I think she wants me. Like she _really_ wants me.” He grinned, mischievously. “I think if I offered, she’d totally sleep with me. What do you think? Should I finally get to sleep with a woman?”

Riddick growled lowly. 

“Or should I just give in and sleep with Johns?” He stepped a little closer to him. “He still wants me, after all...”

The rumble of the other man’s displeasure was something similar to a chainsaw. 

“Are we going?”

Smirking, Xander glanced back at Fry, who was settling a makeshift harness around her torso, getting ready. “Yeah, I think so. Are we leading the charge, then?”

“We really ought to have someone leading and someone following.” Johns said, lazily, tightening the harness he wore. “Maybe we need a man in front and a man in the back.”

“So what, put a dangerous murderer on either side of the party? Sounds like a stupid plan,” Xander laughed, amused.

“I was rather hoping they’d eat you two first,” Johns smirked.

“You think I should take up the back?” Xander asked Fry, quietly. As much of a dick Johns was being, and as much as this man was terrible at figuring out how to survive, it _did_ seem like a fairly good idea. With someone who could see in the dark on either side of the group, they might be able to keep an eye out for threats better. Paris, Shazza, Johns, Fry and the Imam could pull the sledge, and Jack was helping hold up the lights. It made some sense to have someone who could see in the dark keeping up the back of the little pack.

Fry hesitated, then nodded. “Can you?”

“Yeah,” he set his hand on her shoulder, lightly. Her sweaty skin had cooled in the darkness, now, so that it was almost clammy, and she was trembling slightly. She was scared. The wrong kind of scared, too. “I can do that. Take care of them, okay? And keep the lights out of Riddick’s face. Just stick to keeping them at his back.”

She nodded, setting her hand on top of his for a moment, smiling slightly. “I’m sorry for everything that happened, Xander.”

“Hey, it could be worse,” he said lightly. 

She arched a brow. “How in the verse could it _possibly_ be worse?”

“Shazza’s pregnant.”

Fry gaped at him, jaw dropping, then spun to look at the other survivors. Shazza was trying to arrange the little harness they’d jury rigged up for her so that it didn’t go across her stomach, and grinned up at Paris when he helped her tie the rope carefully. She looked quiet and introspective, but she certainly didn’t _look_ like she was pregnant. “How do you know?”

“She smells pregnant,” he shrugged. “And she’s carrying around two heartbeats.”

“You can sense things other people can’t, don’t you?” She said softly.

He shrugged, and nodded. 

“Even before the eyes,” she murmured. Fry stepped closer to him so that Johns, hopefully, couldn’t hear over the sounds of the creatures, which were still howling and singing as they gathered everything together. “You could see more than we could even before your eyes went... like his.”

“Yeah, kind of,” he admitted. 

Fry frowned, considering him. “Xander. Why do you have the same eyes?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. We’d better get moving. The things are getting closer.”

She nodded, quickly, and cleared her throat. “All right, men.”

The others turned to look at her, and Shazza cleared her throat. 

“Men. And Shazza.” 

The other woman grinned, and nodded at her.

“Riddick!” Fry called. “Lead our way!”

The convict lifted a hand, acknowledging her ‘order’, and started jogging up the hill, and towards the settlement. The other survivors grunted and pressed against the ropes that tied them in, dragging the lights and the fuel along with them.

Xander smiled faintly, and followed, watching for the creatures as they moved.

  
 

\---

  
 

The monotony of travelling was starting to wear on them.

Dragging a heavy load, straining against the ropes, the survivors were torn between the fatigue of the work and the constant fear that the creatures always flitting just on the edges of their circle of light were going to dart in to eat them anyway. But the fear was wearing them thin, gnawing at their nerves. They were snappy and peevish and it still never got them anything. The creatures were still there, flitting in and out of view, singing their little inane songs.

Moving behind the pack, keeping an eye on the movement, Xander would have given his right arm for a drink.

Even all things considered, maybe he should have taken the whiskey Riddick had been offering earlier. His every muscle ached and protested, demanded he just find a place to lie down, just for a little while, but he powered through. He’d never really known how to just give up. 

He didn’t miss, though, when Johns slipped out of his harness, pleading that his side just couldn’t handle the strain, and limped up to speak to Riddick.

What was the snake up to this time?

Johns seemed to be telling Riddick something important, or at least something _he_ thought was important. He was leaning close to him, talking conspiratorially, as though he wasn’t just trying to take him in for bounty. As they spoke, Riddick glanced back at their little motley crew, and Johns waved him off of doing that again, quickly. But Xander had noticed the dull glint in Riddick’s eye, and he was already moving.

Jogging up beside Fry, he ordered her, in a low voice, “Fall back. Keep the light back, and whatever you do, don’t follow.”

She caught his arm, eyes wide. “Xander. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said, honestly, and smiled tightly at her. “Just stay back.”

He jogged forward, meeting the other two men.

They didn’t seem surprised to see him.

“Well, well.” Johns grinned, seeming rather pleased with himself. “Ain’t this sweet? It’s like a family reunion, isn’t it? The three of us against the world again.”

“It was never the three of us against the world, Johns,” Xander rolled his eyes. “What are you planning this time?”

He grinned wolfishly. “Me? Nothing. Riddick, though...”

A muscular arm was suddenly around his neck, jerking him back, and Xander’s heartbeat stuttered for a moment when he felt the point of a blade pressing into his lower back. Fourth vertebrae up, just to the left. The sweet spot. 

“Riddick?” he breathed, the arm across his throat threatening his oxygen flow. 

“I told you Riddick would turn on you, Xander,” Johns drawled, stepping closer. “You were never anything more than a convenient body. How the fuck you really thought he was a better choice than me is beyond me. But hey... bygones be bygones, right? Hell, all I had to do was point out you’d make a good distraction for us to get through the valley, and your boyfriend was more than willing to stick the knife in you.”

“Fuck you, Johns,” Xander snarled, heart a staccato beat, too fast. The knife pressed harder, and he bucked slightly, trying to avoid getting cut.

“I really wish you would have,” the man sighed, almost mockingly. “But on the battle field, doctors would decide who was worth saving, and who they could let die. They called it _triage_.”

“Really?” Xander swallowed, arching harder at the sharp sting of the blade just piercing his skin. He was so fucked up, that his reaction wasn’t blubbering in fear. Riddick with knives, frankly, turned him on. It was hard to accept that he was about to be filleted by the man that turned him on. “Riddick? What’d they always call it when we’d decide who lived and died?”

“Murder,” he rumbled, smirking.

“I thought that’s what it was,” his hands closed around the handles of the ulaks tucked in Riddick’s belt, and he leapt forward, tearing them free.

Riddick’s arm around his neck dropped as the other sprang into motion as well, circling around the merc like they were circling sharks.

Johns spun, furious. “You son of a bitch, Riddick, you said - “

“Truth is, Johns,” he growled. “I hate breaking in new bitches. I got this one exactly where I want him.”

“That,” Xander said lightly, letting the blade dart out to just flick the tip at John’s injured side, catching the wound just enough to make it bleed fresh. “And it takes too much time to train a new bitch with these beauties.”

“Now... there’s just one rule.” Riddick stepped back, melting into the shadows. “Stay in the light, Johns.”

Xander smirked, and wiggled his fingers at Johns as he slid back into the shadows himself.

After all, Johns’ plan _wasn’t_ bad.

Distract the animals with a large, bloody sacrifice, then the others blast in through the ‘back door’, so to speak, while they were distracted. It was exactly the type of thing he or Buffy might have suggested.

The only problem with Johns’ plan was who he wanted to use as bait.

Xander had had more than enough in his life of being used, thank you very much. Like Riddick had said - he was never going to be used again, not unless he allowed it.

Johns looked somewhat at a loss, but did tug out his gun, jamming shells into it.

Xander was hardly about to alert him that half the shells he had dropped into his gun were his does shells, useless except for the drugs he’d hid inside them.

Johns fired. The first shot was a good one.

Riddick struck first, and for a moment, Xander wasn’t even sure who was on top. It was a flurry of motion and activity and blood, Johns struggling to beat the blade-armed man with his gun, at one point slamming him hard enough to force one of Riddick’s shoulders out of its socket. As the other man shoved it back into place and Johns struggled to see him in the dark, Xander darted forward and wrapped his arm around Johns’ middle. He slashed the blade of the ulak across his stomach, and darted back when the wounded Johns reeled back to fire at him, howling.

He fired - another real shot - and while it missed Xander, it made his ears ring.

Xander just melted back into the shadows, unsurprised when Riddick was against his side in a moment, the larger man’s fingers curling around the inside of Xander’s wrist.

Johns reeled, breathing like a wounded animal as he searched for them in the darkness.

But something else was already looking for him.

One of the massive beasts had shifted closer when Johns’ blood was newly spilled, and as he flailed about, trying to find Xander and Riddick or anyone else to lay punishment on, the thing leapt forward, eagerly, grabbing Johns by the shoulders with shockingly human like hands.

The man tried to shoot it, naturally, but his gun just click click clicked uselessly - it had finally hit the dose shells. No ammunition there.

Xander did wonder, briefly, if Riddick was seeing the man’s demise the same way he was, and figured he had to be - didn’t they have the same eyes now? So Riddick was seeing Johns struggling against those claws, then would see the creature lifting its huge, hammer-like head, then snapping it down - those vicious jaws closing over Johns head, snapping his head off as neatly as Xander used to snap the head off marshmallow peeps as a child - effortlessly.

He’d seen death before.

Many times before.

And Xander supposed he should feel sick with himself, should want to puke or at least feel a little nauseous. 

He _shouldn’t_ feel a deep buzzing thrill that made his fingers tingle and make him want to throw his head back and howl his mastery to the moons - not that this planet _had_ moons, but that wasn’t the point - and smear the man’s blood on his hands to prove to himself that his enemy was really dead and conquered and defeated.

He shouldn’t.

But he did.

“Come on,” Riddick growled, low and barely audible, lips brushing his ear as he did. It snapped Xander out of his reverie, but Xander would say later that he was pretty sure that _was_ the only thing that would have managed that.

Xander nodded, quickly, and followed Riddick.

The survivors were waiting where they’d left them, looking slightly anxious. A look of relief crossed Fry’s face when she saw that it was the two of them emerging into the circle of light the generator produced, and he wondered for a moment what that said about her. She was relieved that the convicts were alive. Was that normal?

“Where’s Johns?” she asked.

Riddick smirked. “Which half?”

The Imam looked away, a pained expression on his face, but Paris panicked. “What? You may not have _liked_ him - I daresay none of us _liked_ him - but good god, people, they just killed the man with the gun!”

Xander rolled his eyes, and stepped forward. He should have maybe cleaned Johns blood off of his blades before trying to convince someone that he wasn’t dangerous, but at least he’d have the foresight to tuck the ulaks in his own belt. They were still wet with blood, and there was still a spray of droplets across his now-stained and half destroyed tank top, but at least his hands were (mostly) blood free. “Look, Paris... don’t panic, okay? We didn’t kill anybody. Johns, I mean. We didn’t kill Johns. One of the animals got him.”

He didn’t look comforted.

“Paris...” he sighed, and took a step towards him, then another when the other backed up rapidly. “We didn’t kill him.”

“Just stay away from me,” he said, fiercely.

This wasn’t good. This was very _not_ good. They still had a way to go, to get off of this shit hole of a planet, and at this point, that meant working together. Even if that meant trying to calm the panicky antiques dealer down. “Paris, wait!” He reached forward, catching the light tube Paris had wrapped around him.

He yelped like a little girl, and squirmed out of his binds, bolting for the “hills”, proverbially. 

“God dammit, I so need a towel,” Xander muttered, and bolted after him.

Paris wasn’t terribly fast, but he _was_ panicking, so he had the speed advantage of blind desperation on his side. Fortunately, he had a flashlight still, and the animals were wary of approaching that wildly bobbing point of illumination. That at least gave Xander the time to barrel after him, and wrap his fingers in the back of Paris’ blanket or whatever he had slung around himself, and tug him back, towards him.

Paris let out a panicked squeal, but it wasn’t because Xander had grabbed him. At least Xander didn’t think it was.

He was pretty sure it was because of the creature that leapt down from the cliffs to land in front of them. Rearing back to consider them, it howled in rage, and even Paris’ shaking flashlight beam pointed at its chest didn’t seem to dissuade it.

“Get behind me!” Xander howled, shoving the man behind him as he tugged out the ulaks.

Paris, wisely, didn’t argue.

Both blades out, Xander focused on the beast’s face, and shifted to bolt forward as it shifted forward on the stone, opening its massively fanged mouth as it reached for him.

The ground creaked.

Xander froze.

The beast leaned even closer, and its weight, combined with theirs, shattered the thin crust of the stone. Presumably, they’d ended up on top of one of those nests the animals had burst out of, earlier, and with the weight of all of them, it was just too much, and they fell through.

Paris screamed, high and reedy, and the winged thing seemed to realize belatedly that it could, in fact, fly.

Xander reached out to catch its clawed foot. It slashed at his hands and wrist, making a bloody mess of him, but he held on tight, gripping tightly until finally his bloody fingers were forced loose and he free fell again.

Reminded eerily of his dream of the jungle and the pit, Xander fell through darkness he could see nothing in.

[ The Mock Turtle's Story](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/48762.html)

 


	10. White Rabbit - The Mock Turtle's Story

  


****White Rabbit - The Mock Turtle's Story

 

 

Riddick dropped to his knees at the edge of the hole about three seconds too late to grab Xander from his fall.

He swore violently, in a language none of the others recognized.

“Do you see him?” Fry asked, voice catching. “We have light, we can - “

“No.” He stood, jaw set.

“Riddick!” She cried, gaping at him in horror as he began to walk away from the hole. “Goddammit - Xander’s still - “

“His heart’s not beating.”

Fry hesitated, having no idea how to answer that. The Imam set a light hand on both Shazza and Jack’s shoulders, then knelt at the edge of the hole to pray, quietly.

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander’s heart wasn’t beating.

He lay still and silent on the stone floor of the massive hollow, half on top of Paris’ battered and broken body, one of the ulaks lying a good dozen yards away, the other still held loosely in a bloody hand.

One of the juvenile creatures moved closer, sniffing curiously at Xander, fanged jaws spreading wide and ravenous as it leaned over him.

Then let out a shriek of pain when an ulak sank into the soft skin of its throat.

“Not your fucking _lunch_!”

Eyes open and blank silver blue, Xander sat up, shoving the blade deeper. Teeth bared in a snarl, he slashed across the throat again, and grunted as he shoved the now limp body aside. 

He rubbed his chest, wincing slightly. It _hurt_. Apparently his heart didn’t like stopping.

Shoving the ulak he held into his belt, he stood, and walked slowly, carefully, across the stone floor, bending to scoop up the second one.

He’d thought he hurt _before_.

Running his fingers through his hair, Xander sighed heavily, and leaned back to look up at the sky.

He couldn’t hear Riddick’s heartbeat anymore, and he had no idea how long he’d been down here. He could have been here for a full day, for all he knew. The others could be gone.

“Fuck me,” he groaned.

Then: “I’m gonna have to _walk_.”

So walk Xander did.

Grumbling, muttering to himself, Xander ate something he’d _really_ rather he never have to explain to anyone, but would really have to thank Paris for, he walked. As he did, he made up lists of all the things he wanted to do it and when he ever got to Earth.

Top of the list was seeing his family and friends, but that wasn’t a fun thing for the list, so he adjusted it slightly for more _fun_ as he walked.

One was wanting to take Riddick to see every one of his favourite places in Sunnydale, though that would be a short list. The Bronze, the library, Willow’s house. That led to a slight detour in which he considered what the hell Riddick would think about Willow, and decided that he’d think she was a little strange. But he figured Willow would love Riddick. Or at least _try_ to love Riddick. She was good at that. 

Second thing he’d do would be to find a girl he could lose his _girl_ virginity with. Sure, he could do that _without_ going back to Earth, maybe. Hell, Fry seemed to like him well enough. But while she might be _human_ , she wasn’t an _earthling_. That part actually made his head hurt. 

Then he wanted to find a pride parade somewhere. Maybe LA? 

He just sort of figured that sure, sex with a chick might be fun and all, but he suspected that his addiction to Riddick wasn’t about to go away just yet, so he figured he was likely going to spend the rest of his life sleeping with that man, which meant he was likely going to have to admit to himself at some point that he _was_ gay (or at least bisexual, he supposed, but if he only ever slept with one man, was that really bi, or was that just really really lucky gay?) and if he was, dammit, he might as well celebrate it. He never _really_ had been one for subtly or anything like that. So if he was going to be gay, he was going to be rainbow-flag-a-flying gay.

Then he’d get a cheeseburger. No, twenty cheeseburgers. No wait, move that back up to the _top_ of the list.

He’d do that one first.

The massive underground network of caves was strangely empty. He’d sort of expected to see more of the massive animals down here, but no, it was empty. He figured maybe they’d all gone up to the surface, to take advantage of the limited time they had to actually explore their own planet, so no one was hanging out underground, now. Claustrophobia, maybe.

Wincing at the pain in his lower spine - he’d landed _hard_ \- he started climbing a cliff wall through which he could just see the stars beyond.

For all he knew, he was climbing into a feeding frenzy. The other survivors might have been eaten, they might have reached the ship, they might be gone. For all he knew, a large group of hungry creatures were waiting around the edge of the hole, ready to eat him. 

It _hurt_ to climb. His spine ached, the wrist the animal had torn up was protesting. 

And _then_ it started to rain.

Xander’s fingers sought handholds, little ledges of stone and sand that he could grip and tug up. The heavy rain slamming down to hit his hands made the little ledges slick and difficult to grip, and more than once, he grit his teeth tightly as his fingers slipped on the stones. His focus now wasn’t on all the things he wanted to do. All he could focus on was where his fingers were going to grip next and on the solid _thump thump thumping_ of his heart. Wherever Riddick was, his heart beat would be matching his. At least that was something.

He didn’t know how long he climbed.

All he knew was climbing and climbing and straining and struggling and the thump of his heart. 

He pulled himself up, finally, struggling. His arms almost gave out, and he almost tumbled back the way he’d come, but he grit his teeth and howled as he threw himself over the edge, and landed, bonelessly, on the stone floor of the planet’s surface, panting. He stayed there for a long time. A very long time. But he had to force himself up, had to get to his feet, and he struggled up to his knees, then his feet.

Taking in a few deep breaths, he started to walk towards where he _thought_ the settlement was, stumbling. 

How he hadn’t been eaten a thousand times over before he created that hill, where the lights were coming from, he didn’t know. There might have been a hundred animals wandering about ready to eat him. But he didn’t see a single one. 

He was fixated.

Xander stumbled over the edge of the ridge, and threw his hand up in front of his face, crying out in shocked pain. He hadn’t even realized how bright the lights were. 

There was a shout from somewhere ahead of him, then abruptly there was a short, blond woman throwing herself against his chest, hugging him tightly, burying her face in his chest. For a moment, Xander really thought it was Buffy, tiny firecracker Buffy throwing himself into his chest, but then he realized it was Fry. Fry was holding onto him like he was some kind of lifeline, clinging to his chest, her arms wrapped around his chest. 

“...Fry?” he asked, quietly, surprised. 

There was more movement, and the Imam emerged into the swath of light created by the headlights next, beaming. He looked delighted to see him, and he called a delighted _“Allah akbar_!” when he saw him closer, beaming as he laid his hands on Xander’s shoulders. “I prayed for your safe return. Allah is good to bring you back to us.”

“...thanks, Imam,” he murmured, really wanting to sit down. “...where’s Riddick?”

The Imam glanced at Fry, hesitating.

“Where’s Riddick?” he said again, louder.

“We don’t know,” Fry confessed, shifting back from him, slightly, almost as though she was afraid Xander was going to freak out and hit her in response to that news. “About ten minutes ago, he - he left. We were waiting, but... Shazza’s been injured, and he could have been killed...”

“I have to go find him.” Xander stepped back from them, eyes wide. 

“It’s not safe out there, Xander,” Fry said, shaking her head. 

“I _have_ to go find him,” he said again, stubbornly, and ducked under the Imam’s arm when he reached out to stop him. He had no idea where he was going. But if Riddick was out there, he had to find him.

“Wait!” Fry called after him, jogging behind him. “You need a light or something, you can’t just run out there alone - “

“Just - just let me do this,” he started running. 

Xander couldn’t see Riddick, couldn’t really see any trace of him. But he _could_ see a mass of warm bodies a few blocks away in the settlement, and if he knew Riddick, it meant that he was in that mass of animals, destroying them. Hopefully destroying.

By the time Xander got there, the crush of bodies had scattered. There were at least four of those creatures lying dead on the ground, blue blood spreading through the rain and the puddles. 

And half crumpled on the sandy ground, Riddick was breathing hard, bleeding.

“Riddick!”

The other man’s head snapped up, and Riddick pushed himself up, teeth grit. There was no light around them, but it was almost too easy to see each other in the darkness. Xander threw himself to the ground, to his knees in front of Riddick, throwing his arms around him, holding him tightly and desperately, burying his face in the other’s neck. He knew that Riddick didn’t like these displays of “affection”, but he didn’t care, didn’t care in the slightest. He _needed_ Riddick. 

“I was so scared,” he hissed, into the other man’s skin. “I thought that I’d never find you, that I was going to end up dead or you were going to end up dead or that we’d both up dead or that I’d never even get the chance to tell you - dammit, Riddick, I was so fucking _scared_... I can’t live without you, not anymore...”

It almost didn’t even surprise him when Riddick crushed him closer against his chest, fingers tangled in Xander’s hair, holding him fiercely. 

“C’mon, Riddick,” he murmured. “The ship is ready. They’re waiting for us. We can get the hell out of here. And the animals are coming again. You can hear them, right? They’re almost here.”

Riddick stumbled to his feet, pulling himself out of Xander’s grip, and reached down to pull him up. 

“Watch out!” he howled, grabbing Riddick’s hands and jerking down.

If you had asked Xander, a little over three years ago, when he had appeared in space, if he would ever be able to overpower Riddick, he probably would have laughed until he’d peed his pants. But he tugged down on Riddick’s hands, and he made the other topple to the sandy puddles, and bolted up to his feet, ripping out an ulak to try and slash at the animal who had thrown itself at Riddick. 

It didn’t hit Riddick.

But its spear like tail, the one it used to skewer its victims so they couldn’t get away, hit Xander.

He sucked in a sharp breath, startled. 

It hurt. 

Oh _fuck_ yes, it hurt. 

It was a sharp, spreading pain, like poison spreading viciously from the injection point and out through his body, to his limbs, through his entire person. 

Swaying slightly where he stood, he looked down at his chest, where the tail was speared straight through his chest. It made him feel sort of dizzy, just looking at that. Like his blood loss was finally catching up to him, or maybe they _did_ have poison in those bone spires on their tails, because he sagged, keening softly. He _wanted_ to slash at the tail, wanted to cut it apart, wanted to rip the creature apart and prove he was a manly strong man. Capable of being _with_ Riddick, you know? But he couldn’t. For once, Xander’s body was just _not_ listening to him.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, surprised at his body’s reaction, and slumped, eyes rolling back in his head.

  
 

\---

  
 

Dry, cool fingers were stroking his hair, and Xander sighed softly, coming back to himself, and opening his eyes.

A familiar woman was curled up beside him on the furs, the light from outside the cave seeming to shine right through her white hair and dress as she hummed, a small nonsense song that he felt like he should recognize, but couldn’t quite catch.

“Am I dead?” Xander asked, tongue feeling like it was too big for his mouth, making him slur.

“No.” Aereon smiled softly. “Not for lack of your trying, however.”

He snorted, and winced. That sort of really hurt. “I am not _trying_ to get myself killed, thank you very much.”

She started ticking things off on her fingers. “Since I saw you last, you have been beaten about the face and shoulders, nearly shot at least twice, been nearly betrayed by the Riddick, fallen into a pit, become severely dehydrated, and then, to top the proverbial cake, you were impaled by one of the creatures. In an attempt to save the Riddick, no less.”

“I’d pretty much go to hell and back in order to save Riddick, Aereon.” he said, closing his eyes again. “But you said I’m _not_ dead.”

“No. Fighting poison out of your system and having a mass murderer stitch your wounds closed. But you are alive.”

“Riddick’s stitching me up?” 

“The Riddick is stitching you up, Lavelle Alexander,” she smirked.

“Every time you come back in my dreams, you fall back to calling me that again. And here I thought we had made real progress, that you weren’t going to call me ‘Lavelle’ anymore. So let’s go back to that. Call me Alexander if you have to, but no more Lavelle nonsense.”

“Of course,” she nodded, still stroking his hair. “Have you managed to speak to him yet, or...?”

“Or.” Xander sighed, heavily. “I don’t know exactly how much you know, but it seems like a lot, since you know all the ways I’ve managed to nearly get myself killed. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but... anyway... see, we’ve kind of had this problem. I mean, first off, the ship we were on crashed on a desert planet in the middle of nowhere, then Johns went all ‘I would rather kill you than collect the bounty on Riddick’ which was a little much, and then we kind of had to escape from some giant animals who wanted to _eat_ us. So unless he’s figured it out already, and I kind of imagine he hasn’t cause it’s not really the kind of thing you usually need to figure out... god dammit, Aereon, why does life have to be so complicated?”

“Because you’re Lavelle and you chose the Riddick.” 

“I’m not sure, actually,” he held up his index finger, “That I really _chose_ Riddick. I sort of think the universe chose that fate for us.”

“The verse?” She smirked slightly. “That could be it.”

“...what, was it your fault, or something?” He twisted slightly on the bed of furs, trying to look up at the woman. “Did _you_ set me up with the man whose fault this all is? Because if it _was_ you, that’s a bit of a dick move, Aereon. Just telling you.”

“I rather thought you _liked_ being the Riddick’s mate,” she said lightly. 

“The Riddick’s bitch, you mean?” he smirked. “Yes. I do. I actually _really_ like being his bitch, which makes absolutely no sense to me, because everything in my brain says ‘no, you should never _want_ to be a man’s bitch, much less a bitch for a crazy killer man’ but you know what? I totally love it. I actually _really_ enjoy it - oh my god, I have turned into a teenaged girl. Even worse, I’ve turned into _Buffy_ or something! Oh god! Not cool! Not cool at _all_! Augh!”

She laughed softly, and said softly, “It’s time to wake up, Xander.”

He blinked, looking up at her. “Time to wake up?”

She nodded. 

“Right. That makes sense... time to - “

Xander bolted up, and howled in pain. Bolting up had apparently _not_ been the thing to do, because within seconds he was being pushed back to the chair, Riddick’s hands firm on his shoulders, to keep him still. 

“Oh god,” he gagged, pressing against those hands. “Riddick, what is - _?_ ”

“Johns left this behind,” another voice joined them, and the pain addled Xander trembled as he watched Fry step up beside the chair, holding Johns’ old dosing gun in slightly trembling hands. She still looked as dusty and blood-covered as she had before, but looked like she’d finally gotten some _sleep_. “Do you think it will work?”

Riddick shifted his hold on Xander, so that his forearm was resting across the other’s collarbone, still holding him down. He reached out with his free hand for the dose gun, frowning at it. 

“Riddick, don’t do it,” Xander gasped, trembling. “Please. No morphine. Please.”

“Xander, you need it,” Fry reached out to touch his sweaty, clammy forehead. “You may object to the idea, but you’re going to be in a _lot_ of pain if you don’t get something for it.”

He reached up to grab the hand Riddick had on his collarbone, gripping it tightly. “ _No_.”

He hesitated, frowning. 

“Riddick.” Xander said fiercely. “ _No_. It’s _not_ happening.”

The other man frowned, but nodded, and set the dose gun back in Fry’s hands. “Use it for the other injured.”

“I can’t use it for Shazza, she’s pregnant,” she frowned, but took it back, anyway. “And Jack’s just too small.”

“Well, keep it the _hell_ away from me,” Xander rasped, slumping back into the chair, closing his eyes. “So how bad was the hole, anyway? Am I a pincushion now? Or am I more like a convenient spear holder now, with a big gaping hole? Damn, I don’t actually have a huge gaping hole in my chest now, do I?”

Riddick shifted his arm off of Xander’s collarbone, considering him for a moment.

“C’mon, Riddick. Don’t lie to me.” He cleared his throat, glancing around. The others were gathered at the back, talking quietly among themselves, looking like they were checking on Shazza’s injury, whatever it was. He’d never actually caught that part of the equation. He shifted slightly in the chair, trying not to injure himself any more, but wanting to get slightly closer to Riddick. The other helped him move, and tugged the crocheted sweater off of him. He’d used it like a blanket, apparently. “Wait, this is your sweater. You _brought_ the sweater with us?”

“You like it,” he explained simply, as though that explained everything. 

“Yeah, I do. But it could probably use a wash.” He snorted, and winced when that hurt. “Ow. Show me the damage.”

Dropping the sweater on the floor, Riddick rested his hand on Xander’s bare chest - why was Xander’s chest bare? Oh right, the whole stitching him up thing - and tapped gently at Xander’s left pectoral. “It was there. You’re healing already.”

“Yeah, well... I heal fast, remember?” He smirked slightly, then winced again. “Guess that means we have to wait a few days before we can have our ‘thank god we’re alive’ sex then, huh?”

“Likely.”

“Dammit. I haven’t gotten laid in two years, Riddick! _Two years_! I never knew what I was missing until I didn’t have it!”

He snorted, and shifted again. Xander hadn’t even noticed, but Riddick was kneeling beside his chair, and the fact that the man was willing to do that just to take care of him made him feel pretty damn special, really. He rested his hand on Xander’s stomach, stroking lightly as he leaned closer to him, and kissed him firmly.

Xander groaned softly, resting a hand at the base of the other’s skull, rubbing lightly at his now-lightly stubbled scalp, pleased.

They still had to talk. But they had time, right?

  
 

\---

  
 

“Morning.”

Xander glanced up from the computer panel that he’d been working on, pausing the search he’d been running to swing his seat around, facing Fry. She handed him a protein bar, still wrapped in foil, and he smiled as he took it, gratefully. It was a good thing someone had thought to grab a bag full of emergency rations before they’d rushed to the emergency vessel. They’d have never had food, otherwise. “Is it morning?”

“I have no idea. I tend to say it’s morning whenever I wake up.” She smirked, and leaned on the computer panel, tearing her own protein bar packaging open. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“No idea,” he shrugged, tearing a hunk off his bar. 

She frowned, seriously. “You should sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he laughed softly, chewing thoughtfully. “But I’m healing just fine without sleeping, actually. I don’t even hurt anymore.”

“Well, that’s good,” she considered that. “Wish we had a bit larger ship, though.”

He blinked at her. “How come?”

“Because there’s no room for the six of us on this ship,” Fry laughed, shaking her head. “We’ve been giving Shazza the bench bed seat thing because of her injuries, but you and Riddick pretty much always have the chairs...”

“Oh!” Xander half stood, immediately. “Do you want...?”

“No, no, of course not,” she said quickly. “You’re more injured than any of the rest of us are. You need to sit more than we do.” 

He frowned, unconvinced. 

“So we haven’t seen anything, yet,” Fry said lightly, swallowing her bite of protein bar. “But we’ve only been out here for a few weeks, so maybe we just need to keep going for a little piece...”

“Yeah, I hope so.” He frowned slightly. 

“You don’t look so convinced,” she smirked, taking another bite of her protein bar. 

Xander shifted in his seat, playing with the neck of Riddick’s sweater, clearing his throat. “Well... I know we could just say that Riddick died on the Hades planet, when we crashed. I know that’s even the plan. But... what if whoever we encounter figures out who he is? I have _issues_ with people trying to take Riddick away from me, you know? And yeah, I’d go to a Slam with him, if that’s what I had to do to stay with him, and trust me, I _so_ don’t want to go to a Slam.”

She laughed softly. 

“I’m too pretty for a slam!” he laughed, pleased that she was joking with him. It was nice. Kind of felt like it always had when he was back at home, hanging out with his friends, the girls, just chattering about nonsense and laughing and joking. He felt like _himself_ again. It was nice. “But then, I suppose I already have someone to take care of me as a slam bitch, sooo...”

Fry laughed, then glanced up when Riddick stepped up beside them, dropping himself in the other seat. “You all right?”

He frowned, but his attention was on the sensor screens, not them.

“Riddick?” Xander shifted closer to him.

“Something’s coming,” he frowned.

Xander glanced back at his own sensor screen, flicking through several different scans, frowning. “My computer doesn’t say anything about anything coming...”

“It could be cloaked, depending on what it is,” Fry suggested, shifting to lean over the back of Xander’s chair, so that she could peer at the screen he was working on. She rested one of her curled hands lightly on his shoulder, and ignored Riddick’s almost idle growl. She knew that he was possessive and that he didn’t like anyone other than him touching Xander, but she’d also learned that Riddick was just growling. He wasn’t going to rip off her hand just because she touched him. If she’d _hurt_ Xander, then all bets were off, but just resting her hand on his shoulder would be all right. “But I have never seen a cloaked merchant vessel before, though.”

“Merc ship,” Riddick growled. 

“Shit, really?” Xander looked sharply at him. “You ain’t talking to them, okay? You’re dead, remember?”

“I’ll tell them I’m Johns,” he rumbled.

He hesitated. “I guess that might work, but...”

There was a jerk, and the ship abruptly stopped moving. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Ships in space don’t really have _breaks_ , they don’t really _jerk_ to a halt. It threw them all forward, and Xander threw up his hands to brace himself on the instrument panel, startled. “Fuck!”

“They’ve caught us,” Fry gasped, alarmed.

“Please don’t do anything stupid, Riddick,” he hissed, glancing at him.

He smirked, but adjusted the screen, waiting.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The ship began to protest being caught. It had worked so beautifully, considering it was a very old piece of junk that had been somewhat abandoned for a very long time. For a very long time, it had worked so well for them, but now it was still trying to keep going, but was being pulled back by some kind of hook that had been thrust straight through the fabric wings. Warning alarms and lights started going off, flashing red and desperate, and a mechanical voice that had long ago been programmed into the ship began telling them how bad it was. “ _Engine running at 170% capacity_ ,” it warned. “ _Hull breech imminent_.”

Riddick was playing the pilot perfectly, hitting all the right controls to try and control their rapid worsening of condition, and Fry shifted to use Xander’s instrument panel, to help him, if she could.

Xander willingly leaned back, letting her work.

Nothing was helping, though, nothing was getting them out of the mess. Riddick was clearly hoping that the fabric wings would rip, and let them escape from the hook, but it didn’t seem to be happening that way. Abruptly, he leaned over, and powered down the ship.

“What are you doing?” Fry gasped, stunned.

Riddick just leaned back, steepling his fingers, frowning. 

“ _Unidentified craft_ ,” The radio crackled to life, and a Germanic sounding voice came through to them “ _State your purpose and contents_.”

Xander swallowed, flashing back to every sci fi he’d ever seen. It was never a good statement to hear.

The message was repeated at least twice more, the man giving it sounding more and more impatient, before Riddick spoke. “Name’s Johns. My ship got scrapped on a transport run. The only other survivors from the whole mess are with me. Outside of that, we’ve got nothing.”

_You should have let me do it_ , Xander thought, looking up at him, biting his lip.

“ _Tell me, Mister Johns..._ ” The voice drawled on the other end, and Xander winced again. That did not sound like a man who had bought the lie. “ _What brings you to this lonely corner of space_?”

“I’m a bounty hunter,” Riddick lied easily.

“ _Then it appears we have something in common_.”

Fry let out a soft cry of alarm. 

Shifting forward, Xander reached across to set his hand on Riddick’s forearm, looking serious. They were screwed, if this man decided to reel them in. If they were bounty hunters, then it was almost guaranteed that they would have some kind of database, maybe from the Mercenary Guild, and they’d either be able to tell immediately that he _wasn’t_ Johns, or they’d know immediately that he was Riddick. 

He nodded, seriously.

And then, with a jerk, the ship began to move again, but in the wrong direction.

“They’re reeling us in!” Jack cried from the back of the ship, bolting forward to come towards her heroes. He didn’t even know _why_ they were still her heroes, they’d practically gotten her killed a half dozen times out there. 

The Imam helped Shazza to her feet, and she clung to his shoulders, eyes wide and alarmed. 

“Can you move?” Riddick glanced at the woman, seriously.

She nodded, teeth grit tightly. Her leg was still bad, but she would go through hell and back, if she needed to. “I’ll kill ‘em all myself if I have to.”

Riddick nodded, satisfied, and tugged a lighter out of his pocket, the one they had lit the alcohol bottles with, back on Hades, and sparked up the cutting torch.

“You’re going to fight them off with a _cutting torch_?” Fry gaped at him. “That’s not going to do it, Riddick! We need something with some real power here, I don’t even think it’s likely that you and Xander with your blades are going to do much!”

He shook his head, and held the cutting torch up to the fire suppression system. “Hold your breath.”

“Oh god,” Xander groaned, not liking the sounds of this, and reached up to pinch his nose moments before there was an explosion of sound, then foam flooded out through the suppression system, filling the whole ship without a moment’s hesitation.

He thought he was going to suffocate. He tugged his goggles down, over his eyes, against the stuff trying to invade his every orifice, and held his mouth tightly shut. It was like being surrounded by a giant marshmallow, a puffed up surrounding that held him in an embrace lighter than air. All he could see through the darkness of his goggles was white and the occasional dull red glow of the heat of one of the other survivors. He could move through it, if he was careful in how he did it, like a fish through the water, and he reached into his belt, tugging out one of the ulaks. 

There was a touch on his arm, almost too light to notice, but he didn’t fight when that touch shifted to slide down to his wrist, and took a firm grip on the blade, slipping it out of his hands. 

Riddick wanted his blade, fine. It was better if they were both armed, anyway. 

He tugged out the second, and waited, breath burning in his lungs as he waited to breathe.

He didn’t actually have to wait very long - he was afraid he was going to have to start sucking in air and just try to filter the foam out of what he breathed. But instead, there was some kind of explosion, and the back of the ship flew off, letting the extinguishing foam erupt out of the confined space of the ship like a volcano abruptly uncapped. It yanked them all out of the ship with it, blasting them out into a zero-gravity space where he hung for a moment - before he noticed unfamiliar heart beats in the foam, with them.

Mercs had been caught in the explosion of the foam.

Perfect.

Xander used to be a man that didn’t kill. He would injure, sure, and use Riddick’s training to make his enemies really hurt. But he didn’t _kill_ the other humans around them.

Somewhere along the line, that had changed.

And now, he slid close to those warm bodies, those heartbeats he didn’t know, and he dug the point of the ulaks into their soft bits, their lower spines, their guts, and jerked the blade back towards himself, tearing them open. Blood stained the foam, and he could hear cries of pain other than the ones he was inflicting. He and Riddick would kill them all, if they had to.

If he wasn’t in the foam, Xander reassured himself by thinking that at least he’d be saying something cool while he did it, like, “Go ahead, punk, make my millennium,” or something. Or the sci fi version of “Hasta la vista,” whatever that would be.

Was it bad that he was so callous about killing now that he contemplated movie phrases as he ripped people open?

Naw, they deserved it.

Oh! “Yippee kai yay, motherfucker!” He always liked that one. That one would work.

They were moving away, but there were still a few that were trying to escape, and he was able to just catch them, a little. Teach them to mess with them. 

His lungs _ached_ , though, and he had to get at air. 

There was a touch on his inner elbow, one with a familiar heartbeat, then Riddick _threw_ himself out of the foam, leaping into battle like it was a ballet, dipping and swinging and dipping. It was a beautiful moment of macabre poetry, and were Xander not currently scrambling after him, trying to keep up, he would have been content to sit and watch. 

But Imam, Shazza, Fry, Jack - they were all still inside the foam, trying to breathe, trying to avoid getting shot, and Riddick was doing an amazing job of distracting, well, everyone. Xander figured his role now was more of a clean up one, so goggles down, eyes hidden, he moved through the swarm, destroying any Riddick had injured instead of killed. It wasn’t a bad role, as roles went. Meant he was useful.

But Jack was shooting off her mouth about something. God, that used to be his role, distract the assholes with idiotic comments, almost get killed.

He liked to think he’d learned his lesson.

Jack clearly hadn’t.

The man that had unleashed all these mercs on them, the tall man who had been standing, overseeing the massacre, trying to get them to fall back, flew through the low gravity air, and knocked Jack to the ground, a massive thing that was half gun half sword pressed to her forehead. Xander’s mind, naturally, went to Final Fantasy and the gun-blades, but he shoved those thoughts back, quickly, and tried to figure out if there was a way to stop him while the man was distracted by Riddick.

“Call off your lapdog,” Riddick growled, and looked up at the landing the mercs had emerged from. There was someone there, shrouded in white. “Before his trying to impress you gets himself killed.”

Jack whimpered.

Xander’s head snapped back to look at the girl, alarmed. She had her hands up, palms open as she tried to look helpless and defenceless. Riddick and that woman were talking now, words sliding over Xander like he was the rock in their stream of words, but he didn’t hear any of them. His attention was on the girl lying on the floor, and the tears puddling in the corner of her eyes. 

_Not again_ , he thought. _Not like Lynn again._

“ _Riddick_.”

His head snapped up again. It was a wonder Xander didn’t give himself whiplash. The woman - who had apparently removed that white shroud of hers and now stood in one of the strangest Evangelion looking outfits Xander had ever seen - had said the name. They knew he wasn’t Johns, which meant they knew about the bounty and meant that they wanted Riddick for what he could get them.

It was causing a real conflict, a real divide for him. Half of his mind said to save poor defenceless Jack. The other half demanded he stand with Riddick to present a united front.

“The others are just a cover for me,” Riddick growled. “You kill them, and you’re just saving me the trouble later.”

“Is that so?” She asked, in her heavily accented lilt. “Perhaps. But perhaps not. Janner?”

Xander figured that these mercs were in it for the money. He figured they’d find out each of them were, just in case they could get even a few dollars more for any of them - Shazza sort of seemed the type to have stolen a land claim or something - and basically just threaten until they bowed to their wishes and did what they wanted. It would have been a smart tactic, and would allow them to get the most out of the situation. Practically every ‘villain’ he’d ever faced had done that. It was a staple of the genre, so to speak.

These ones didn’t go with the standard route.

The gun fired.

Xander cried out, startled. Jack’s eyes were still open, staring up at Janner, but she wasn’t seeing him anymore. He bolted forward, wanting to tear the man limb from gangly limb.

But Janner snapped up that gun, and Xander barely pulled up short before he impaled himself on the blade. Breathing hard, he glowered at the man, hate filled eyes hidden behind his goggles.

“Take them all out, Janner,” she ordered, and he squeezed the trigger.

Xander was prepared to move, to duck, to weave, to do anything he needed to do to get away from the man. He’d gotten fairly _good_ at it, he figured he might be able to.

But before he had time to try, Riddick’s ulak thudded into the side of the gun, impaling it, knocking it aside.

And yeah, Xander’s heart was following the same stunned thud it had been when Riddick had done nearly the exact same thing in the valley of bones on Hades.

“No.” Riddick growled.

“Interesting,” the woman drawled, and almost devious look on her face. “But your friend has weapons as well, Riddick.”

Xander hesitated, reluctant to give over his weapon.

“Xander,” he said, lowly.

He dropped the ulak, instantly.

“Remove his goggles, Janner.” The woman ordered, and though Xander bared his teeth warningly at him, the man stepped forward. Hooking his finger under the side strap of his goggles, he tugged them up, exposing Xander’s eyes.

He flinched at the light, and narrowed his eyes against the harshness.

“A matched pair,” she drawled. “In weapons, and with eyes. Gather up the others, and bring them in. This one... take him to the medic bay.”

“Wait - “ Xander started.

But mercs - those that weren’t dead, and there weren’t many of them left - were already moving. Fry, Shazza and the Imam were pulled from the extinguishing foam, though the holy man was murmuring soft prayers for Jack’s soul as they led him away. Another grabbed Xander’s arms, and hauled him in a completely different direction, away from the others. He keened, but that didn’t stop them, and Riddick didn’t even look at him. He had to stay firm. That was what Xander had to assume, anyway.

The medical bay they brought him to was completely white, clinical. Sterile.

He was pushed onto a table and strapped down. He protested, naturally, and tried to get away from them - this whole thing reminded him way too much of the Dentist and torture and oh god he didn’t need to relive that again. He _really_ didn’t need to relive that.

Tall men and women in white safety suits poked and prodded, took blood samples despite his best attempts to bite them. One prodded at the spot where the creature had stabbed them, but the roar of rage he let out apparently convinced them to kindly fuck off, thank you.

One of them was shining lights in his eyes, which hurt like a _bitch_ , when one of them started talking about non-human genes. He gaped at them, confused. He was human. Hell, that was Xander’s biggest saving grace, half the time, wasn’t it, that he was the most human schlub around.

Unless...

Buffy said once he could have been half demon.

What if his father had been a friggin’ _alien_? Oh god, maybe that explained why he’d gotten freaky see-in-the-dark eyes like Riddick, even though he hadn’t had surgery like he had. 

Oh god, he hoped not.

But it _would_ explain a lot of things.

Including what they started talking about next.

  
 

\---

  
 

Fry was hyperventilating.

Xander wasn’t sure why he could hear that, but she was freaking out, her heartbeat skittering along at an alarming pace, hitching every time she took one of those frantic breaths. Which was often. The Imam’s was heavy and steady, though also fast, and Shazza’s was skipping alarmingly. 

Xander couldn’t see them.

He was in the dark, he could feel it like a blanket, wrapping around him, but he couldn’t see anything happening within it because someone had chosen to blindfold him. 

It gave him great satisfaction to say he’d bitten the thumb off of the person who had tried to gag him.

Completely off.

That’d show ‘em who they were fucking with.

He had no idea where he _was_ though, which sort of pissed him off. He’d have rather’d seen where it was, so at least he would know what was going on. When he’d been dragged into this room and literally chained to a massive pole, the others had already been there. It _did_ worry him a little that he knew the others well enough now to identify them by their circulatory system, mostly because he’d noticed just how much of it affected him when one of them _died_.

He could feel the dull beats of the mercs standing guard over him, and behind some kind of wall, he could feel something else, like a whistling. He was pretty sure that was the circulation system of some other thing working, but he didn’t think you could ever call it a _heartbeat_.

And then he heard Riddick’s.

Relief flooded through him, and he strained against the chains, trying to get free. He’d thought for sure they would have locked Riddick in one of those rows of cryo pods they kept their bounties in, frozen and silent, without him.

He could tell there were others with them - Janner and that woman. But Riddick was what was important.

He could hear them talking, and he leaned forward, harder against the chains, straining to hear. He could just make it out, except for when the mercs standing beside him spoke to each other, a deep rumbling that seemed to roar across his hearing, drowning out everything. They were talking about something useless - some piece of ‘art’ that the captain, Antonia Chillingsworth, they said, was making. Useless. Xander twisted his head to face them, and barked, “Unless you want me to introduce your insides to your outsides, _shut the fuck up_.”

Xander hadn’t really supposed that would work.

Maybe his “Riddick voice” growl was a little scarier than he’d thought, because they both shut up immediately.

Grinning to himself, and figuring he probably looked like some kind of loon, Xander strained to listen again. He _had_ to hear this. He needed to know what was going on.

“ - precaution,” Antonia was saying. “You try to do anything... uncivilized... killing me, for instance... I detonate the explosive charge Janner just implanted, and sleep _very_ well tonight.”

Xander must have made some sound, some sign of displeasure, because the mercs actually shifted away from him.

“You’re not putting me on a pedestal.” Riddick was saying. _Pedestal_? 

“No. Of course not. You’re strictly for my _private_ collection.”

Xander was starting to come up with a list of all the ways he was going to kill this Antonia Chillingsworth. Top of the list was removing her eyes. Then she’d never see this... _collection_ of hers again.

“Okay. You go through all the trouble to catch these guys, and this is what you do with them.” Riddick rumbled. 

What the _fuck_ was she doing with them? 

“You’re missing the point.”

“What point? You got a million UDs standing around collecting dust.” 

“You underestimate their value, Riddick.” Antonia said in that slithery, sibilant voice of hers. It was like a snake become a human, like she was Medusa or something. Freezing people to stone with her eyes - oh god, freezing people to stone, bounties just standing around... she made some kind of _statues_ out of them? He _had_ to be wrong. He almost _wished_ he was wrong, but he was pretty sure he was right. “They are _priceless_. Each, at one time, the most wanted man or woman in the whole universe. The number of lives ended at the hands of those living and breathing in this room is - _incalculable_.”

“Ain’t what I call living.”

Oh god. That’s what she wanted to do to Riddick. That was what she wanted to do to the most badass killer in the whole verse goddammit that wasn’t _allowed_.

“Just the same,” she sounded amused. “I assure you that they are all _very_ much alive. Each one sustained in a form of cryo so profound that seconds seem weeks, and to blink an eye is a day’s work. The brain, however, continues to function unimpeded. The mind continues to think and feel, swarming with whatever dark thoughts it’s trapped along with. As it will be, for hundreds of years”

That was odd. From the sounds of what she was describing, Antonia Chillingsworth really thought that this statue cryo of hers was somehow different from _normal_ cryo. But that was _exactly_ what Xander experienced every time he went under.

“So much more fitting than dropping them off at the nearest slam,” she was continuing. “Here, they are _appreciated_ for what they truly are. Transformed into objects on par with their life’s work. And why? Because I gave them the audience they so desperately desired. The recognition they bought with the blood of others. I understood their actions, stripped free of moral convention. Don’t you see? They’re something greater now, Riddick. Something more than they ever were before. _Art_.”

_You_ , Xander thought. _Are nineteen kinds of crazy_.

Riddick apparently agreed. “Lady. Your taste sucks.”

“I - expected as much.”

“So let him _go_ , you son of a Medusa she-beast!” Xander snarled. The mercs guarding him jumped, almost guiltily, as they seemed to be searching for whoever the hell he was talking to.

A mechanical motor suddenly sprang into action, and Xander lifted his head, trying to figure out exactly what it was. It whirred and hummed, a mechanical whine as something was moved by means of a winch of some kind. Maybe panels sliding open, or curtains sliding up, or something. It ran for a good long minute, really bothering his ears, before it stopped, and she began speaking again.

“You see, Riddick, there’s a fundamental difference between you and I.”

“Yeah.” His lover agreed. “You’re a psychopath.”

“You,” she corrected him, “Don’t appreciate art. But I believe that the reason for this is very different than you or anyone else might think. You’re an artist!”

For once, Xander agreed with her.

“You _make_ art, Riddick,” she was saying, eagerly. And Xander really, truly agreed with her on this one. What Riddick did _was_ art. It was fucking beautiful. “Not analyze it. You shape it with your own hands, carve it from flesh and bone. But a man like you does not understand such a thing by being _lectured_. You must _experience_ it.”

Something shifted. Something changed.

And that something was made a lot worse the moment he heard Riddick utter the words: “Oh, shit.”

_Oh. Shit_.

“What do you want?” Riddick rumbled.

“To watch you work. I’ve spent the later half of my life observing fantastic things. The work of terrible men. Men such as yourself.” 

“Bitch, you have no idea,” Xander growled under his breath.

“But it’s always _after_ the fact. When the moment of bloody creation is cold and past. _That_ changes now.”

Another motor started up, this one quieter, but clearly more powerful. He could feel the faint rumble of it working under his feet. Something physically was moved, then those strange, whistling sort of systems started moving, and Fry, Shazza and the Imam’s heartbeats skipped a beat before picking up speed. They were seeing something. Something he couldn’t see, from his little place in the shadows, blindfolded against the world.

“I need to _see_ it, Riddick,” she purred. “I need to see it with my own eyes. As it happens.”

“I get out of there alive - “ In what verse would Riddick _not_ get out of there alive?! What were they sending in there that he couldn’t see?! “ - and you’ll see it again. This close.”

“No Riddick. I want... your masterpiece.”

_Lady_ , Xander grinned. _You ain’t never going to get that. Trust me_.

“An artist is nothing without his instruments.” There was a metallic sound, sharp and bright, something that sounded almost familiar. The ulaks. Of course.

“When we meet again, I’m going to bury these in your eyes.”

Oooh, he hadn’t thought of that one. Thank you, Riddick, burying ulaks in Antonia’s eyes was now top of the list. Much better than just outright removing them. Far more poetic, far more painful.

There were shouts then, the sounds of flesh and metal striking flesh, the meaty sounds of combat. Not real combat, not really, just a full body slam then the grunts of those who were thrown away. One let out a grunt and a thicker, meatier sound, like he’d dropped a good distance and landed hard on something solid. He had gotten used to that sound, partially because Riddick really seemed to like throwing people off of high things.

That whistling he'd heard earlier got louder. Moving closer, the things seemed to whistle and sing and call with a shrill, high pitched timbre that crept into the bones and the marrow and the guts. Even blind, Xander knew that this was going to be something that Riddick was going to have to battle, and that it was not going to be good.

And battle Riddick did.

Clearly the other three survivors were being used as some kind of distraction, because he could hear them freak out when something particularly bad happened. 

“You psycho bitch!” Shazza howled at one point. “What kind of sick shit was done to you that you think this bullshit is fucking _funny_?!”

Shazza shifted up a point or two in Xander's estimation of her.

“Riddick!” Fry howled. “Behind you!”

He swore and strained against the chains, desperate. Xander  _had_ to get to Riddick. Had to. Maybe he'd just be a distraction, but god dammit, maybe he could  _help_ !

But one of those whistling circulatory systems was rendered silent, then another, then Antonia began to clap.

“Oh. Bravo, bravo, Riddick! I have never seen such majesty, such glory... but I really fear, my Riddick, that you were holding back. Hiding just the tiniest _bit_ from me. Perhaps....”

“Perhaps you're a fucking cunt!” Shazza bellowed at her. 

Xander snorted.

As though Shazza had never spoken, Antonia continued. “Perhaps you need is the proper... incentive.”

Lights flared on around Xander. At his feet, they were aimed up towards him, as though to illuminate his face, and even under the bottom edge of the blindfold he could see how agonizingly, blindingly bright they were. 

One of the mercs stepped up beside him, and jerked the blindfold off.

Even through his tightly closed eyes, the lights seemed determined to sear into his retinas.

“Oh, I forget how light sensitive you are,” she drawled, not sounding sorry in the slightest. But the lights dimmed, quickly, enough that he was able to open his eyes, to see despite the pain.

Fry, Shazza and the Imam were huddled together on the floor. The floor itself was covered in alien gore, and a pissed off looking Riddick stood in the centre of the room, ulaks in hand, glaring up at him. The goggles weren't on, which seemed like a poor idea, just in case they tried to blind  _him_ , too.

“Hey, Riddick,” Xander called, feeling sort of stupid. “I really thought we were done with this whole you rescuing me thing. I really did.”

“Yes,” Antonia hissed, looking pleased. She waved a hand, holding a pair of opera glasses. “You _do_ rescue this boy quite a bit, do you not, Riddick? Enough to make a person... curious. After all, he is just a human boy, is he not?”

She shifted closer to the edge of the balcony she stood on, over looking the 'arena', and spread her arms out wide. “But then I thought, perhaps he's an artist like you. And, oh, he is, Riddick, he is. The apprentice to the master painter, he scrawls his signature in the marrows of  _your_ enemies, Riddick, and given time, I daresay that his masterpiece may rival yours. But no! No, that is not why you throw yourself into the fray for this boy, is it, Riddick?”

Riddick's eyes were on the woman, but his fingers were shifting on the ulak handles. 

“This _boy_ is your _mate_!” She howled, delighted. “Your prime! This boy _bears your unborn child_!”

Everyone froze.

“Fuck.” Xander breathed.

“ _What_?!” Fry yelped, gaping up at Antonia like she'd grown a second head or something.

Riddick's spine had stiffened, and his fingers on the ulaks were now completely still. He looked like a statue already.

“Isn't it true, Lavelle Alexander?” Antonia called, gleefully.

Xander lifted his chin, and only said, “Two heartbeats, Riddick.”

“What is this?” Shazza demanded, throwing up her hands. She was absolutely terrible at laying low and not drawing attention to herself. “Some kind of sick joke?”

“No,” Riddick rumbled.

Xander swallowed. “Really rather I could have just told you myself... sorry, Riddick. Guess I figured I’d actually have a chance. So... ah... surprise?”

“Surprise, yes.” Antonia purred, tapping her lower lip with a single fingertip. “What a pleasant surprise. Think of the _majesty_ the piece would have, Riddick, for the Riddick, the killer of men, displayed with his prime, the bearer of his children! But wait... no... it would have so much more emotional _impact_ if we _waited_... the piece would really _sing_ if it was the Riddick, his mate, and their _child_. Another generation of the killers of men!”

“Not happening, you plastic bitch!” Xander roared, jerking his arms. There was a soft _clang_ , and he felt the chain give, just a little.

“Ah, yes, but you are the protector of hearth and home, are you not? Your Riddick is the warrior.”

“I don't need to be a warrior!” 

Xander jerked again, and the link he had broken completely gave out. Snapping his arms free, he barrelled off the platform, dashing across the gore slick floor. He  _didn't_ actually expect Riddick to throw out his arm, stopping him in his tracks, and he snarled, pressing against the stronger arm. “Let me go, Riddick! I am going to  _aerate_ her!”

“Wait,” he growled.

“Nothing's changed!” he snapped back. “This changes _nothing_ , so let me - “

“ _Wait_.” Riddick ordered again, voice almost viciously firm. It was a tone that brooked no arguments. Xander wasn't allowed to put himself in danger. End of discussion.

“Not fair,” he grumbled.

“Oh yes,” Antonia breathed, leaning over the rail to peer closer at them. “I cannot wait to see you kill together.”

There was a sound like a car being crushed with a watermelon in it, or a tyrannosaurus rex stepping on a water balloon or one of Revas' drones on steroids popping bubble wrap. This was followed by a cry of horror, then a series of heavy thuds.

Out of the same door the shrill things had emerged from came a massive thing. It was half mechanical, half beast, and finding the place where one half ended and the other half began was difficult on of a son of a bitch ugly thing like that. There was a good half dozen men and women dressed in strange gimp suits being dragged along behind it, and one of those dragging bodies very noticeably didn't have a head. That explained the odd noise of earlier.

“Ew,” Xander murmured.

“And this, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, as though she was the maestro of some strange orchestra. “Is my pride and joy. I would like to see how you fare against my baby.”

“I need a blade,” Xander breathed, as close to Riddick's ear as he could manage.

“ _No_ ,” he said firmly.

“Riddick. You may want to keep me from it, but that thing will _tear me apart_ if I don't have a blade.” It really would, too.

Silently, Riddick pressed one of the blades into Xander's hand.

“I'll stay out of your way if I can,” he murmured, promising basically nothing. He was pretty damn sure there was no way for him to avoid being in the thick of things, and as far as he was concerned, that was the way it was meant to be anyway. He meant it when he said this changed nothing.

“Stay back,” Riddick rumbled in his ear, then the gimp-suited people let the beast go.

It let out a roar – and almost digital sound – and leapt for the nearest targets. Fry, the Imam, and Shazza.

Riddick and Xander were already moving.

Xander often thought that they moved like they were performing a ballet, when they fought together. But this instance made it look like every time before that they'd fought together they'd been tripping over their feet and cutting themselves more than the enemy. They ducked and weaved together, like an elegant and macabre display of death. It was almost like their dual beating hearts were letting them read each other's actions before they even took them. It was actually completely brutally beautiful.

The thing kept trying to attack them, but they always skipped out of its reach, laying small light injuries to it that just seemed to piss them off more than anything else. 

They leapt over the massive digital anomaly. Xander actually used his body to help Riddick up, like he was a stool for him. Slamming his foot down on the beast's head, pushing it down, he slashed at its neck with the ulak.

Xander slashed at the underside of the thing's throat, darting back to get out of the way of its claws.

With a sort of heavy, sick sound, its head literally ripped and dropped off.

“Gross,” Xander panted, crinkling his nose.

The other leapt off the body, frowning as he checked to make sure Xander was uninjured.

“Riddick, there's other things to – holy mother of ducks!” He howled, grabbing his lover's shoulders and tugging him forward, hard, to try and avoid the massive animal. Apparently it had _two_ heads, one within the other. It had just pulled the smaller head inside itself, like a turtle.

It sunk the teeth of that second head into Riddick's shoulder, shaking him.

Riddick roared, and twisted to slam the ulak into its head.

“Get! The! Fuck! Off! Him!” Xander howled, punctuating every word with a punch, slamming the blade over and over into the animal's beady little eyes, until you couldn't really say that it _had_ eyes anymore.

It was Riddick that shoved his blade deep into the animal's mouth.

It gnashed and ground at his arm, making it a bloody mess, but it slowed, then stilled before it slumped slowly to the ground, finally dead.

“Let's _not_ do that again,” Xander panted.

“Beautiful!” Antonia cheered, reminding them both that they had an audience. “Yes, you will form my greatest piece, my greatest display of violence ever seen. Two generations of killers, yes...”

Riddick tapped the side of his neck. There was a small bloody wound there. “The explosive,” he breathed.

“It'll hurt,” he breathed back.

“I know.”

“The only problem I'm having,” Antonia continued, oblivious. “Is how to _mount_ you.”

Xander shifted forward to slide the tip of the ulak into Riddick's skin, pushing until he felt the hardness of the explosive. Thinking he  _really_ ought to be apologizing for doing this, he slid his finger into that wound, digging the explosive out of the other man's neck.

“No!” Antonia called, realizing what he was doing.

“Oh god,” he gaped, tugging the thing right out of the other's skin, a bloody mess.

“Maybe I'll just make you into an _abstract_ piece!” She shouted, scrambling to get the detonator.

“ _Run_!” Riddick ordered the other survivors.

They were smart enough to listen, and bolted.

Xander had been on a baseball team, once, as a kid. It was an ill fated adventure, because he tended to get angry while playing, and apparently the Little League coaches didn't take too kindly to an angry player who actually took baseball bats to other teammates. But while he had played, before he was banned, he discovered he had only one useful skill, and it wasn't hitting or catching.

It was throwing.

He threw back his arm, and whipped the thing like it was a baseball, straight at Antonia's balcony.

She detonated it, just as it hit her balcony.

Riddick had looped his arm around Xander's neck, hauling him along after the others that had already fled. He seemed to be favouring the side from which Xander had just cut an explosive out of him from, but he could hardly blame him for that. Still, he let the other tug him along, more than willing to follow Riddick.

“I'm sorry,” he gasped, as they ran. “I should have told you earlier.”

“Yes,” he growled. “You should have.”

“And I'm _really_ sorry about that,” he insisted, ducking under a metal beam, rolling across the floor for a moment, then bolted up to run again. “But I mean, _hello_ , I’m a _dude_. When some creepy ghost lady in your dreams tells you that you're going to be having a _baby_ , it just makes sense to take that _really_ insane statement with a grain of salt, okay?”

He growled.

Xander swallowed. “Seriously, though. How the hell does a guy  _get_ pregnant, anyway?”

“If I knew, I doubt we'd _be_ in this situation,” he muttered, then pushed Xander's head down before shots slammed just over their heads. “Mercs.”

“I suppose we should save the, uh... do we need a shot gun wedding before the birth conversation for later, huh?” Xander joked weakly, glad that they were moving again, glad that their feet were slamming against the ground as they tried to outrun their followers, that they were _doing_ something again. He felt like he had purpose when they moved, when they raced. “I don't even know how you feel about that. I mean... fuck. Are you going to be ditching me somewhere before I even start to show or something so you don't have to think about the freakiness of this whole thing? Because trust me, if you are, I completely understand. I’m seriously freaking out about the insanity of this.”

There was another volley of shots, and whatever Riddick might have said was obscured by those gunshots, and they effectively had to stop talking until they were in a slighter better situation.

Fry was leaning out of a small gap between two large metal panels, and waved them towards her, hissing their names. “C'mon!”

Xander skidded into the narrow space beside her, obediently, panting, grinning at them in relief. “Nice to see you guys made it out alive...”

“Yeah,” Fry grinned, sheepishly.

“Riddick?” The Imam asked, frowning. “Are you not coming with us?”

Xander glanced up at the other man, surprised by the fact that Riddick seemed to be showing absolutely no sign of intending to join them. Instead, he was glancing back the way they had come, seriously, and when Xander listened he could hear what had caught the other's attention. The same  _thud thud thud_ that had proceeded that creature was echoing again. There was more than one of the things they had killed, and they were sending them after them. “Riddick, seriously. There has to be another way.”

“Stay here,” he ordered, growling. “All of you. The moment that thing is past, make for the flight deck.”

“That's a level up, to the aft,” The Imam said, frowning.

“Like I said. Know more about merc ships than you should, for a holy man,” Riddick smirked slightly, but threw out a hand when Xander half rose. “Keep him here.”

“You could talk to _me_ , you know!”

“You don't _listen_ to me,” Riddick growled, glowering at him for a moment, then abruptly bent to press his lips to the side of Xander's neck for just a moment, nipping at the soft skin, then straightened, quickly. “Keep him here. Let him follow me, and you pay with your lives.”

“Riddick!” Xander protested, trying to stand. 

The Imam held him back.

“It isn't _fair_!” he protested, and yeah, Xander knew he _could_ push the Imam away if he really wanted to, but maybe a little tiny guilty part of him was saying ' _Goddammit, okay, maybe I actually_ should _do what Riddick orders for once_...' but still. 

“For once, Xander,” the Imam said lightly, gently, “Please just do as you are told.”

He grimaced, but reluctantly leaned back, staying still.

Fry rested her hand on the inside of his wrist, lightly, her fingers curled gently against his pulse point. She smiled softly, hopefully, trying to make him feel better. It helped a little bit.

A group of mercs passed first, carrying guns and sweeping their spotlights over the dark spaces, the little corners they were trying to hide in. Fortunately, they managed to skip past the particular slit of space that the four of them were hiding in, and kept moving on. There was a moment of silence, and Shazza whispered, “Should we run, now, then?” 

Only then there were heavy thuds, and Xander hissed. “Fuck!”

“Quiet,” the Imam breathed, and Xander actually glowered at him for a moment. He wasn't stupid. He knew how to survive. But he already knew what Riddick had done – he could see the little droplets of blood that Riddick had deliberately splattered his blood on the floor, to lure the thing by his scent. 

The creature thumped along, then skidded past them, roaring. 

He shuddered, closing his eyes for a moment, then reached up to tug his goggles down over his eyes again. He'd left them up, just in case he could see anything valuable, but everything was still too bright, and it was giving him a heavy migraine. It was pounding away inside his head, pulsing steadily within his skull. He'd never really had this problem before, but he also hadn't been able to see in the dark, before. 

“We have to go,” he whispered, and slid out of the little space in the wall, quickly. 

The others followed, quickly, though Shazza was having difficulty moving. Xander hadn't even noticed before, but her left leg was twisted, like she'd broken it again, and she was leaning heavily on the Imam as they walked. 

“There,” the Imam pointed to a ladder a little piece away. “We need to climb up there.”

Xander nodded, and grabbed the ladder, quickly, hauling himself hand over hand up the ladder, as quickly as he could manage. He was desperate to get there, desperate to get the  _hell_ out of this place, to get off of this ship and to get back to  _normal_ . Well, as normal as his life  _got_ , really. It wasn't really like he had anything like a  _normal_ life. Especially not now. 

Clambering up the ladder, he grabbed the edge of the opening, and tugged himself up onto the floor. Running his hand through his hair, he grinned, and darted forward, heading for the ship that was sitting nearest to them. He'd gotten pretty good at getting ships warmed up and ready to fly, so he figured the first step was to get it ready, and wait for Riddick to get there to join them. He wasn't leaving this ship without the other man. Not happening.

“Imam!” He called. “I could use a hand over here!”

“The Imam isn't coming.”

Xander snapped his head back, startled, and froze when he realized that Janner, the scarecrow, was standing by the edge of the ladder, holding a rifle slung over his shoulder. He was smirking – and Imam was lying limp on the floor beside him. 

Xander sucked in a sharp breath. 

He didn't  _think_ the man had killed him. Or rather, that he hadn't tried – he could hear the Imam's heartbeat, but it was weaker than it usually was, slower. He might have just been unconscious, or he might have been bleeding out slowly from a gunshot. He just didn't know, but whichever it was, he was terrified. He considered the Imam a friend – and all of his friends were being  _killed_ .

Letting out a howl of anger, he launched himself at Janner. There was no art to it. He just wanted to destroy him. 

The other tugged out a sword from who-knew-the-fuck-where (Had Xander actually been paying attention, he would have realized that it was strapped in a sheath on his back.) and slammed the blade against Xander's ulak, meeting him metal for metal. They clanged against each other as he struck harder, struggling to just destroy the other. He just wanted Janner gone, destroyed, dead, and he'd do it any way he could.

Janner was good with his sword.  _Very_ good with his sword.

He slashed at Xander, catching him whenever he could, but Janner didn't seem to be returning the strict desire to destroy and kill. He just seemed to want to torture and hurt him, to cause him pain if he could. And he  _did_ , he was good at it. He licked flicking little cuts against Xander's collarbone, arms, legs, just cutting him enough to bleed, but not enough to cause any permanent damage.

But Xander was bleeding  _a lot_ right now. 

And if there was one thing they had learned in Xander's life – whether that was in space, or back home in Sunnydale - it was that, when he started to bleed a lot, things noticed. A lot.

He heard it coming long before Janner did, and actually tugged his goggles up, exposing his eyes. He grinned at Janner, crookedly, then dropped to the floor, hard.

There was a crackle of electricity. Riddick had slammed a metal pole into the generator power station that was sitting only a few feet away from them, and with a crackle, the room was plunged into pitch darkness. Xander grinned in the darkness, enjoying the way Janner seemed to flail, trying to strike out at either of them in the darkness. There was a faint hum, and he knew that the emergency lights were powering up, but before they had a chance to start up, Riddick bent to snatch the ulak Xander was offering out of his hand, and slammed them both hard and fast into Janner's face.

The emergency lights came on, glowing purple and pale, as Janner let out a chocked sound, and toppled back onto the floor, a blade embedded into each of his eyes.

Xander clambered up onto his feet, grinning. “ _Nice_ .”

“I told you I would bury these in your eyes,” Riddick smirked, reaching over to rest his palm on Xander's shoulder-blade. “You fucked with my mate.”

“I would have killed him if I’d had the – did you just call me your _mate_?”

He arched a brow, seriously. “You preferred bitch?”

“No!” Xander said quickly, clearing his throat. He felt a little out of his depth here. On one hand, he was used to being called bitch, bitch wasn't _nice_ , but he was used to it. Mate seemed almost too... intimate. It was like 'lover', all over again. Nice, but it just didn't seem to _work_ with _them_. “I'm totally okay with being called mate, I am, it's just... it just doesn't seem to be your kinda _thing_ , you know?”

“If you weren't my mate, I doubt you'd be pregnant.” He smirked, and headed back towards that ship again. “Get the others ready. I’m going to prep the ship.”

“So that we all can leave?” The Imam asked, clearing his throat. 

Riddick glanced back at him. He had his goggles up on his forehead, baring those purple-blue-silver eyes, almost unreadable. But he did smirk. “I  _could_ leave you all here. You'd take care of a teenaged boy bearing my child, wouldn't you?”

“Very funny, Riddick,” Xander grumbled, and stepped up behind him. “Let's just go, okay?”

He snickered slightly, and grabbed a hold of the handle, twisting it and pulling the massive metal door open.

But the metal door was blocking something. It was blocking the sound of harsh breathing and an erratic, wild heartbeat. Antonia stood behind the door, with an antique pistol in hand – antique even for Xander, with Earth's old school technology – and she fired the moment she was able to. 

Riddick was thrown back by the sheer force of the shot, his back slamming hard into the plas-teel floor. 

“You _animal!”_ She roared. She looked like hell. Antonia had clearly always taken great pride in her appearance before, that damn plug-suit and her perfectly neat hair, but she looked like a mess now. Her hair was a tangled mess, her makeup was running and she was breathing hard. “You barbarian! I offered you art, but now I will just _destroy_ you!”

The gun fired again.

But it hit the wrong person.

Xander had grabbed her wrist, when he saw that she was trying to shoot again, and twisted her arms back. She had struggled to shoot him, to stop him, but he was stronger than her, faster than her, and  _he_ had the need to save his mate. She had just had her honour insulted, that was all. So when Xander twisted her arm back, and she tried to fire, she shot herself in the face. 

He dropped her, and Antonia dropped boneless to the ground. 

Riddick shoved himself up, hissing. 

Xander hesitated, and glanced back at him, swallowing. “You okay, Riddick?”

He gave him a dull look, one of  _obviously_ , and straightened. “Get on the ship, bitch.”

“Ah, and we're back to bitch again, okay, now we're back to what I’m used to.” He ignored the order, though, and shifted forward to tuck himself under Riddick's shoulder, helping him straighten up. He ignored the low, rumbling growl Riddick let out, because, quite frankly, he didn't care if the other's pride was bruised. Riddick was injured, and right now, that was important for him. He needed his injured mate – ha, now _he_ had used that word – to be, well... _not_ injured. So he planned to do whatever he had to do to fix him. “C'mon, my big bad Riddick. Maybe you were never meant to be an artist anyway.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“Cryo.”

The others looked up, surprised. They'd been in space for maybe all of ten minutes, so far, and a course had been laid in – for New Mecca, in the UV system. It had been where the Hunter-Gratzner had been headed, anyway, so it wasn't as though they were changing the plans. It made sense. 

But no one had really expected Riddick to stand up from the pilot's seat, turn to face them all, and order, sternly, for them to “Get your asses in those cryo beds.”

“This ship _has_ some emergency systems,” Fry pointed out, surprised. “We don't need to go into cryo right away, we could take a few days, take care of Shazza's injuries - “

“And I’m _pregnant_ ,” Shazza said, surprised. “They say cryo's no good for a baby.”

“If you're pregnant now, you were pregnant _before_ you went in cryo,” Xander pointed out, standing up. He was glad they'd given him that crocheted sweater back when they had finished up that 'medical inspection' they'd done on board the ship, because space was _cold_. And besides, it might be just a touch much for the rest of the survivors to be sitting there with _two_ manly muscular half naked men. Riddick was more than enough. (And Xander wasn't really all _that_ muscular, anyway.)

(Hell, Xander was having a hard time keeping his hands off of Riddick's bare chest himself.)

“Which means,” he finished the point he'd been making before he got distracted by naked abs, “That you were more than willing to go into cryo for _two years_ in order to get you and Zeke to a better place... so I think you can handle a few more weeks until you end up on a good safe planet. Sides. I did the pregnant cryo thing too.”

She snorted, but did smile lightly, and stand. “All right, all right, stop with the lectures, kiddo. I get it.”

Fry sighed heavily, but nodded, and followed the other woman. “Coming, Xander?”

“Yep,” he stood.

Riddick's hand closed on his shoulder, tightly, and he said firmly, “No.”

Xander blinked, and glanced up at the man. “Apparently not.”

She arched a brow, considering them for a moment, then grinned, and waved at them. “Good. All right, well... try not to kill each other.”

“Oh, I don't do any killing,” Xander said lightly. 

“And that, my son, is a lie,” the Imam said, resting his hand lightly on Xander's other shoulder, and smiled softly. “I understand the killing, though I don't approve, naturally, because circumstances have conspired against you. But do not lie about it. Yes?”

“Yes, Imam,” he drawled, as though he was one of his teenaged charges, and laughed when the man smirked slightly, patted his shoulder again, and headed towards the back of the ship and the cryo pods. 

They stood side by side, in silence for a few long minutes, even after the cryo pods had clicked closed, and the ship fell into silence again.

Then Xander glanced up at the other man. “So... I’m not dead yet.”

“You won't be.” Riddick frowned, and threw himself down in the captain's chair again, legs spread out, lazily, knees far apart as he considered him, arms resting on the arm rests. He _did_ shift, though, to push the goggles further up his forehead, and just considered Xander with those inscrutable eyes. 

“I feel like a bug under a microscope,” he groaned, and stepped forward. Standing between the other's knees, he considered him right back. 

“Do you,” he smirked.

“Yeah. I do.” Xander reached up to tug his own goggles off, and set them silently on the control panel beside them, before reaching up to delicately remove Riddick's as well, setting them on top of his own. He set his hands on the other's shoulders, lightly, and got completely distracted by running his fingers across the other's bare skin. Shaking himself back to himself, he cleared his throat, and grinned at him, sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m really good at the whole distracted thing. So, ah... hey. We're gonna have a baby.”

Riddick snorted.

Xander flushed. “Okay, I know that sounded really dorky. But we  _are_ . I mean, I guess you could phrase it differently, if you didn't want to think about it, but...  _baby_ . It's kind of hard to avoid that thought, right now. I mean, if you look...” He cleared his throat, and tugged the sweater up a little, up almost to his chest. “See? I’m even  _showing_ . My tummy's getting all round!”

“This is why you prevented me touching you,” he frowned, and shifted forward. 

Xander swallowed, but just watched him. 

Riddick lay the palms of both of his hands flat against Xander's stomach, an intent, contemplative expression on his face. He looked very serious about the whole thing, which was the only reason Xander wasn't trying to hide his stomach again and laugh the whole thing off.

“The heart beat is the same.”

Xander blinked, glancing down at Riddick. “I thought I was imagining that.”

He gave him a dry look.

“Guess not.” He cleared his throat. “Look, I’m new to this whole 'baby' thing in general, and the idea of _me_ bearing a child is so foreign that it's actually giving me migraines. The verse doesn't work this way, Riddick.”

“Apparently it does.” He ran his fingers across the smooth skin, curiously. It was clearly an exploration mission for Riddick. “When have either of us been experts on how the verse works?”

Xander hesitated. “Well, never, I guess.”

“You see?” he smirked. “Are you sure this is mine?”

“Yours?” Xander blinked at him. “ _Wait_ , you mean, are you the baby daddy? Fuck, yes, you are!”

“Could be Johns,” he said calmly. 

“Don't even _suggest_ that!” He roared, horrified. “Goddammit, Riddick, I barely kept that man off of me! I would have stabbed him again if I’d had the chance!”

Riddick considered him for a serious moment, then nodded.

“Good.” He said, tightly. “Never _ever_ suggest that Johns fathered this child _ever_ again.”

He nodded, spreading his fingers across the belly, nudging slightly, as though testing his skin for thin spots.

“What are you trying to do, anyway?” He laughed when the other's fingers found a ticklish spot. “I can't be more than three months or so... I mean... before the whole cryo thing, and with the whole U.Y.s being different than Earth years things, I – I have absolutely no idea how much longer I would have to be like this. Oh god. What's normal for _women_?”

“Six months.” He smirked.

Xander hesitated. “Oh. Well. That sounds a  _lot_ better than nine or ten months or whatever it is women in Earth – wait. Ten months Earth time  _is_ six months U.Y... I am going to be pregnant  _forever_ !”

“Maybe.” Riddick grinned, deviously, up at him.

“Oh _hell_ no,” Xander pointed at him. “Once I pop this one out – and oh _god_ , I don't even want to _think_ about how that's going to work – that's it. No more babies.”

Riddick slid his hands around to nestle at Xander's lower back, pulling him closer. “Doesn't look like it can be avoided.”

“It can _totally_ be avoided!” Xander squeaked.

“How? The traditional route of 'just don't fuck a woman' has clearly failed us here.”

He swallowed. “True...”

“And don't even _think_ to suggest making me your bitch.” He bared his teeth, tugging Xander even closer, so that he had to clutch at the other's shoulders to prevent just tumbling forward into his lap.

“Wouldn't dream of it.” Xander murmured, heart pattering faster.

“Then how do you suggest we avoid that fate again, _mate_?” He smirked.

He swallowed. “Weirding me out with the 'mate' thing.”

“ _That_ would solve it?” He laughed. “Or maybe I should simply never fuck you again. _That_ would solve that problem once and for all.”

“ _No_ ,” Xander said fiercely. 

“Not a fan of that solution?” He grinned.

“That's not a _solution_ , that would be cruel and unusual punishment! Besides, you said it yourself, Riddick, we're 'mates' or whatever, so I don't think we're likely to just stop... I mean... I _assume_... we – what the fuck does it mean that we're 'mates', Riddick?”

The other frowned.

“I mean, _besides_ the fact that it means our hearts beat in tandem now. Cause that's _cool_ , but doesn't tell us anything.”

“Some animals mate for life,” Riddick pointed out.

“Yeah, but humans _aren't_ one of those animals.” He frowned. “I remember _that_ from health class, at least. Unless you're saying we're not human.”

“ _You don't know who your mom and dad are. One of them could be a demon.”_ Buffy had said, back in Sunnydale, back when all of this had started _. “You’ve always been a demon magnet, everything in this town seems to want a piece of you, and this is Sunnydale. Hell, you might not even be human.”_

“We _are_ more like animals.”

He cleared his throat, fingers curled at the base of the other's skull, idly rubbing at the soft, smooth skin. “That's – that's true. But don't you think we'd  _know_ if we weren't human?”

Riddick frowned. “The doc claimed he never touched my eyes.”

Xander blinked owlishly at him, confused. “Huh?”

“In Butcher Bay.” He was running his blunt fingernails up and down Xander's spine, now, and looked rather pleased with himself when Xander all but purred, pressing closer. “I got a prison doc by the name of Papa Joe to fix my arm. Payed him twenty menthol cools.”

“And he gave you a surgical shine job,” Xander finished the story. He knew it well.

“Only he said _he_ didn't do it.”

Xander faltered. That was a part of the story he'd never heard before. “But if he didn't do it, who  _did_ ?”

“There was a woman. Spoke to me. Said it was time to open my eyes. Said it was time for me to _see_.”

“And that's when your eyes went all bluey and you could see in the dark.” Xander breathed, eyes wide. “But I never saw a woman. No one ever told me to see anything. I was just in the dark hold, trying to see beyond the ship, trying to see if you were outside the ship - “

“I was.”

“Ha! Knew it! But I was just trying to see you. To see if I could. Then Johns showed up and went all 'I’m going to use you to get Riddick' and I got really angry at him, I mean, for understandable reasons, I think, then he hauled me outside and it _hurt_. That was... how and why my eyes went really weird. I dunno if that's a good thing or not. I mean, _should_ I have had some woman showing up and telling me things?”

Riddick frowned, still scratching Xander's spine. “I see her in my dreams, sometimes. Only when I’m in cryo.”

Xander rubbed at the back of the other's scalp, frowning. “Aereon said there's a lineup of people who want to talk to you in your dreams.”

“Aereon?” He arched a brow.

“Woman that shows up in my head when I’m in cryo.” He kissed Riddick's forehead, lightly, relaxing into him. “She's old, and... she's an air elemental, she said. She's sort of made of air. She doesn't really touch the ground when she walks, and when the wind blows, she almost goes see through. I thought she was a ghost for a long while. Are elementals a _thing_ in the verse?”

“Never seen one. Heard of 'em.”

“Oh.” Xander considered that seriously, rubbing at the back of the other's neck, lightly. “Well, yeah. She shows up in my dreams, talks to me, and tells me stuff. She's the one who told me I was pregnant.”

“Could be her fault,” he smirked, pressing his nose to the underside of the other's jaw, nipping at his throat. 

“Oh... I don't think it is...” he squirmed closer to him. “I mean, I suppose it could be, but I think there's gotta be some other reason... I mean... um... were we cursed? Or something?”

“Doubt it,” he nipped.

“God, you're super distracting,” he groaned, clutching even harder at Riddick. “Okay, so maybe she didn't do it to me. Or us. Um. Yeah, I guess I have to say 'us' now, because I mean we're sort both involved in... this... now. Um. Does this mean we're _dating_ now?”

He snorted, and leaned back, giving Xander an incredulous look.

“...right. No, that was a stupid thing for me to say. God, I am such an idiot.”

“I believe that mates is rather more like being _married_.” He grinned, lecherously, and bent to nip at Xander's throat again, laughing when he bucked. “I guess that means I’m stuck with you. Hm. I suppose it's a good thing I’ve already trained you right. Because I’m not going to be _trapped_ with anyone unless I _want_ to be. I’m not going to be _mated_ like one of those mindless animals. I will only be with someone because I want to be.”

Xander hesitated, just holding close to the other. “Um. Holy crap. Did you just say you  _want_ to be with me?”

“Sounds that way,” he shifted him up onto his lap properly, actually squeezing the other's ass. 

“Holy _shit_.” Xander breathed, shocked. “Um.”

“What,” he leaned back a little, resting his head on the headrest. “Not what you wanted to hear? Didn't want me to be with you?”

“Oh _hells_ no,” he surged forward to kiss him, eagerly. “I'm just shocked!”

He laughed, and for once, it actually sounded like he was just  _happy_ , as he set about making that chosen mate of his just fall apart at the seams.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Promise to never put me under cryo and just sit and watch me like this?”

Riddick looked up from the instrument panel. He had been working on some research topic of his – he seemed to be researching  _planets_ all the time, and Xander didn't really get why. Weren't they going to New Mecca? Riddick could hang out there for awhile. It was probably safer than running around from planet to planet, after all. 

“I mean...” Xander cleared his throat, sheepishly. He was sitting on the top of Fry's cryo pod, so he was the one doing the creeping now. Dammit. “It's just sort of creepy.”

“You're the one watching people.” He pointed out.

Xander cleared his throat, scratching the back of his neck. “Good point. I know, I am kind of playing the creep here. But I guess you could say I’m, ah... seeking human contact. Since  _you_ are always researching things.”

“You're hormonal.” He arched a brow. “Come here.”

Xander eagerly scrambled up off of Fry's cryo pod, and darted up to the front of the ship again. Beaming, he bounced beside the other man, cheerfully, and said hopefully, “You didn't just call me up here to make fun of me because I’m hormonal again, did you?”

“No,” he tugged him closer, placing his palms flat against Xander's belly again. 

“You just like poking and prodding.” He snorted, grinning at him. “What? Am I getting fat? I don't want to get _fat_.”

“You're getting more pregnant,” he rolled his eyes. “You're getting fat.”

“Oi!” 

“You wanted me to lie?” He arched a brow, spreading his fingers out, as though trying to encompass his whole stomach. It was definitely _rounder_ , so Xander supposed he couldn't really pretend that he wasn't getting fat. It was what, four full U.Y. months now? He was over half way. Was that a good thing?

“No, I guess I didn't want you to lie,” he snorted, biting his lip. “What, is he moving?”

“She is.”

“Ha ha, we've already talked about this. We're two men having a baby. _Naturally_ it has to be a boy.”

Riddick leaned back, but kept his palms pressed into the other's stomach. It had creeped Xander out at first, but he'd learned to just stop wearing a shirt when walking around the ship, because Riddick just kept tugging it up to touch his stomach every once in awhile, and never with warning. Who knew that Riddick the man killer would be all gaga over  _babies_ of all thing. He figured it was probably only because it was his own, but he  _had_ noticed that Riddick really had a soft spot for children. “Two men need to be balanced out with a daughter.”

“Oh come on, you know you want to train a little baby boy to be an epic warrior.”

“I want my _daughter_ to never see violence,” he said fiercely.

Xander rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. A daughter or son of Riddick the man killer? There is no way that our kid is ever going to have a completely violence free life. I mean, don't get me wrong, I am  _totally_ willing to try my best to keep him completely away from anything bad. But I grew up in  _Sunnydale_ , Riddick, I mean... I don't ever want my son to have the same problems I had with classmates dying around them because they just didn't know how to protect themselves.”

“Good point.” He lifted his chin. “She'll be a warrior.”

“A daughter warrior?” He snorted. “Oh god, wait, do you think he's gonna have the see in the dark eyes, too? I didn't even think of that, holy crap, he could be seeing you right through my _stomach_ right now! That is creepy!”

“She would see in the dark, not through flesh.” He said, rolling his eyes. 

“Oh. Right. Duh.” He cleared his throat. 

Riddick tugged Xander closer, forcing him to set his knees on the edge of the seat, so that his rounded stomach was sort of in his face, and he pressed his cheek and ear against his stomach, listening. 

“...you're listening to my stomach. That is like... the least Riddick like thing I have ever seen you do.”

“Anything I do is a Riddick thing to do,” he informed him, seriously, listening for a few long moments. “She's moving a lot.”

“Yeah, he really is,” he frowned a little. “Ow.”

“Ow?” Riddick repeated, arching a brow, looking up at him. 

“He kicked my kidney. Or my liver. I’m not really sure which organ is which, not really, so he just kicked _one_ of them, whichever one it was.”

“You should know which is which,” he frowned, and shifted Xander off of his knees. He actually settled the other on his lap, instead, curling him against him. And yeah, the soon-to-be-teenaged-father curled into him, happily, watching when the convict rested his callused hand on his swelled belly. “In order to target – or treat – them properly.”

“Well, I know where the sweet spot is... isn't that good enough?”

“Hardly.” He frowned, though that frown did lesson when something hit his palm through the other's stomach. “Though at least you've managed that. I’m clearly going to have to train you how to use the human body. Use it for you, use it against you.”

He laughed softly. “Oi. I think you've done a very good job of training me how to use it.”

“I've trained you how I use your body, yes,” he rumbled, smirking slightly. “And I have trained you to use your body well enough to keep yourself alive. Usually.”

Xander snickered.

“But I suppose you are young,” he drawled, trailing his fingers along the curve of his stomach.

“Oi, I’m like... seven years younger than you. That's not _that_ much. I mean, I suppose that it _can_ be a big difference. But in forty years, it won't be a difference anymore!”

“Forty years?” He arched his brow. 

“Oi, yeah, forty years! We're both going to be around, and we're both going to be _together_ in forty years, you got that? Otherwise, our son is gonna be all messed up. Hell, in forty years, he could have kids of his own! Oh god. No. Let's stop that train of thought. I never ever want to think about my children having children. Oh fuck. Especially not while I’m still carrying him around in my _belly_!”

He snorted, shaking his head. 

“What, I’m allowed to have my own little neurosis, okay? People are allowed to have some major freak outs about their children! I’m an unwed teenaged preggo!”

“Bullshit.” He said, firmly. 

“Mating is _not_ the same as married, remember?” He rolled his eyes, and wiggled his left hand at him. “Do you see a ring on this finger? Cause I don't see a ring on this finger. Not married.”

“Do that again, and I'll bite off the finger.”

Xander hesitated, and tugged his hand back to himself, clearing his throat again. “Right.”

“Wake the Imam,” he said abruptly.

Xander blinked at him. “Huh?”

He gave him a stern, serious look. “Wake. The. Imam.”

“Oh. Right.” He slid out of the other's lap. He hesitated for a moment, then headed for the one small bed, which he'd been sleeping in. Well, sometimes they were both sleeping in it. Xander slept in it every time he went to sleep, and he'd started to like waking up with Riddick there more often. It wasn't that the other man had changed and gotten more 'close' or anything. He supposed that it was just sort of a side effect of having been with the guy for a _long_ time now. Scooping up his sweater off his pillow, he tugged it on, and headed back towards the cryo pods. “Why am I waking up the Imam, anyway?”

“Look out the window.”

Xander blinked, and glanced out the window, then yelped. “Holy  _crap_ ! How did I not notice that there was a  _planet_ right outside there?!”

The other just smirked, typing on the panel.

Keying the controls, and hoping he'd done it right – Riddick had shown him how to control the thing, but he'd really rather  _not_ hurt the Imam. He rather liked the guy. He was kind of hoping he'd give him a hand with the kid. After all, the Imam had been taking care of kids when he'd first met him... okay, but he really hoped his kid fared better than the Imam's students had. Yeah. A  _lot_ better. Dammit. 

The glass lid hissed, and lifted up. He peered down at the man there, hopefully, and grinned when the Imam's eyes fluttered open.

“Hey, preacher man,” he grinned.

“I am a teacher, not a 'preacher',” the other man murmured, and sat up, wincing slightly. “Did you get _any_ sleep?”

“Sure, I got some sleep.” He leaned on the control panel, grinning. “Not in cryo, though.”

The other frowned slightly, and slid out of his cryo pod, then seemed to see Xander for the first time. He blinked at him for a few long moments, then said, “I should  _say_ you haven't been sleeping in cryo. How long were we  _out_ here?”

“About a month and a half,” he shrugged, and patted his stomach. “I'm starting to look like some kind of freak.”

“That is not the word I would use,” he reached out, laying his fingertips lightly on the teen's stomach, and murmured a soft prayer for a few moments. Smiling, he stood, and led the way back to the front of the ship. “Ah... that would be Helion, would it not?”

“It is,” Riddick rumbled, glancing over at the holy man. He smirked when Xander stepped up to his side, leaning slightly on Riddick's shoulder. Even though he always seemed to act like he couldn't care less if Xander paid attention to him, he seemed to display a surprising amount of pride whenever Xander showed he clearly _wanted_ him. “We need to land.”

“So land,” Xander blinked, looking confused.

“It is not so simple, on Helion,” the Imam said, gently. “They have very strict immigration control and entrance recording. You need a Light Pass in order to actually gain entrance to the planet.”

“...where the hell do we _get_ a Light Pass?” He blinked, confused.

Riddick smirked, curling his fingers around the back of Xander's knee, running his thumb lightly along the back of his thigh. “From the Imam.”

“Imam?” he blinked at him.

The man looked over at him for a few long moments, then slowly drew a metal piece out of the bag attached to his robes, and offered it to Riddick, silently.

He nodded, and clicked it into the computer itself, as though it was some kind of computer disk or something, and smirked as the computer started humming, connecting to things. “Xander. Wake the others.”

“Augh, you should have just told me to wake everybody at once...” he grumbled, but headed back towards the back of the ship.

“You have a child coming,” The Imam said lightly, glancing over at Riddick, thoughtfully. “And coming far faster than I had expected. I suppose I had imagined that you would be putting him in cryo, to hold off the coming date a little.”

“Why would I do that?” Riddick's expression was strangely calm as he watched the holy man. 

“I would not have pictured you as a _family man_ , I would suppose.”

Riddick shifted slightly in his seat, and actually propped his feet up on the control panel, crossing his ankles. Folding his hands on his stomach, he smirked. He  _looked_ relaxed, looked comfortable, but there was a clear cording of muscle just under his skin. He was ready to leap up and strike. “I didn't have a family. I was found in a dumpster, with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. I had no mother, and I don't know what ever happened to her. I was raised in a home for orphans, and joined the Company the moment I was old enough. I have never  _had_ family, Imam. I cannot say that I  _expected_ to have a child. I truly did not expect to have a child. Ever. He is carrying  _my_ child. That is enough.”

The Imam looked back at him, frowning. It was the most he'd ever heard Riddick say at once. “And the fact that you are the most wanted man in the verse? Has it not occurred to you that your  _mate_ and your  _child_ will be in danger every day because of who you  _are_ ?”

“Yes.” He frowned. “Of course it has.”

“And what will you be _doing_ about that?” The Imam frowned, leaning closer. “I have learned to appreciate your strength, and your intelligence, Riddick. I have also learned to appreciate your possessiveness of Xander. But if you are going to protect him, properly, you are going to have to consider what you are going to do.”

Riddick glanced back at the back of the ship, where Xander was laughing, talking eagerly with Fry and Shazza, who were touching his stomach with awe, and chattering with him. “I will be leaving him with you.”

“Riddick...” he groaned softly. 

He glanced back at him, frowning. “Turning me down, holy man? I thought you were praying for a way you could help.”

“I am not turning you down.” He said, quickly. “I just don't think that it's... an effective solution.”

“It is the only solution.” 

Before the Imam could respond again, Xander bounced up to the front of the ship, grinning eagerly. “Hey! I don't get how birthdays work, with the whole cryo thing. I mean, technically, I’ve been pregnant for over two years. That's not  _normal_ , right? But Shazza got pregnant before I did, but went into cryo more than me, so... does that mean my baby is  _older_ ?”

“Yours will likely be born first, so that would mean yours is older.” The Imam explained, smiling softly. 

“ _Right_. I wondered about that. See. My mother – my birth mother, that is, I’ve never met her, she died right after she gave birth to me – she might have been from, you know... space somewhere. So what if she was in cryo while she was pregnant with me? Maybe I was supposed to be a _ton_ older than I am!”

“That is possible,” The Imam agreed.

“Maybe I was supposed to be older than _you_ , mister 'seven years older than me',” He smirked at Riddick.

“Possible,” he drawled. 

“Heh. That's _awesome_ ,” he grinned, cheerfully, and leaned on the back of Riddick's chair. “Um. This may sound like a stupid question, but this planet is _very very_ bright, isn't it?” 

“Helion is one of the brightest planets in the verse,” The Imam agreed. “Its main export is sunlight.”

Xander blinked. “...I'll go get the goggles.”  
  
[The Lobster-Quadrille](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/49086.html)  


 


	11. White Rabbit - The Lobster-Quadrille

  


**White Rabbit - The Lobster-Quadrille**

 

 “Son of a _bitch_!”

Xander braced himself on the edge of the balcony, squeezing his eyes tightly shut. Even with the goggles, the sun seemed to like burning into his retinas, searing his corneas. He kept thinking he'd get used to it. He kept _not_ getting used to it.

“Xander?”

He jumped, and looked up sharply. Fry looked worried, which made him feel sort of guilty. He didn't _want_ to make the woman worry. “Hey, Fry. Sorry. What's up?”

“The sun?” She blinked at him, arching a brow. 

He snorted, and leaned on the railing, now just as a bit of relaxation, rather than needing it to keep himself up. “Very nice, Fry. I mean... what's going on? What's new? Is something wrong?”

“Ah.” She leaned on the stone railing beside him, quietly. “Nothing.”

“Yeah, that's pretty much what I’ve noticed. Nice place, this planet, but it's... quiet. I mean, it's not quiet. It's actually pretty busy and wild and everything, but it's quiet in the sense that absolutely nothing really seems to happen. It's just lots of church and things. I wouldn't be willing to stay here except, you know, gotta keep hidden and everything.”

She nodded, considering him thoughtfully. “That's true. How _are_ things going?”

“I think Riddick's avoiding me again.” He snorted.

“He does that,” she considered that thoughtfully. “I mean, not that I think he's actually avoiding _you_ , he's just avoiding _everyone.”_

“Yeah, _that's_ true,” he agreed. 

“He seems a little... um... _happy_ about this.” She waved vaguely at his stomach. It was funny. He kept expecting the others to be all freaked out about the fact that he was a pregnant boy, but everyone actually seemed remarkably _calm_ about it. Well, beyond calm, sometimes they were downright excited. It didn't hurt that Fry and Imam were still living with them. Shazza had gotten her own place a few streets over from theirs, a little suite in a house that she claimed was better because she needed her space. This house was apparently the Imam's already – he had bought the home from afar before he ever headed towards UV 6, because he had fully planned on living in New Mecca once his pilgrimage was finished. And as he had been planning on having three teenaged boys with him, it was a big house. Even so, half the time, he saw Fry more than he saw Riddick.

“Oh yeah, which is weird. He's surprisingly happy about it.” Xander hesitated. “I don't even know how _I_ feel about it.”

“Not happy?” She crossed her arms on the railing, watching him. 

“I – I dunno.” Xander frowned, shifting around to sit on the railing. He was only on the second floor, he figured it wasn't really _that_ dangerous. “It's not that I’m unhappy. I don't think. It's just... I didn't _plan_ this.”

“Most babies aren't _precisely_ planned,” she smirked.

“I know,” he snorted. “I mean, I come from _California_ , which is pretty much where the world's capitol of unexpected pregnancies is. I think. Hell, I am super out of touch with what _normal_ teenagers have to worry about, come to think of it. Dammit. Okay, look, I know that this is something that happens. It's just... I’m a _guy_ who is pregnant and the father is the most wanted man in the verse!”

“Ah.” She straightened up, smirking, hands on her hips. “This has nothing to do with a baby, does it?”

“...I'm not in love with a murderer,” he said, clearing his throat. 

“Is that so?” Fry drawled. 

“Nope, I’m not. This conversation is getting way too touchy feely. No chick flick moments, Fry,” he said firmly, pointing at her. “Any more talk of this and I’m going to have to go kill someone, just to balance things out.”

She snorted, and ruffled his hair. It was getting _really_ long. Curling lightly against his shoulder-blades now, even. 

“Oi. Lay off that, I’m not a kid,” he snorted. “You're barely older than me.”

“I'm older than your man is,” she grinned, mischievously. 

“Hey. I will have you know that I don't 'have a man'.”

Fry laughed, genuinely amused by that, and nudged his side with her elbow. “Xander, you are the most love struck head over heels guy I have ever seen. I mean, sure, if you want to pretend that you don't actually, go ahead, but everyone else around you knows perfectly well that it ain't true.”

“Ha ha,” he snorted. “Stop being such a girl, Fry.”

She snorted, then hesitated. “Do you see that?”

Xander spun around, looking where she was pointing. 

Riddick was on the roof of a building across the way. There were a few buildings between them and him, but he could still clearly see the familiar figure moving, crouched low as he moved at a rapid pace, darting across the flat roof and towards another roof. He clambered up onto the ledge around the edge of the roof, paused for a moment, then leapt, landing on the roof beside it.

“What is he _doing_?” Xander frowned, glancing at Fry. 

“Um... hopping about, I guess. Do you think something happened?”

“Dammit, something must have.” He grumbled, and clambered up onto the railing itself, walking along it to the end, and reached up to grab the edge of the roof at its lower point. 

“Woah, woah!” Fry darted forward, alarmed. “What the hell are you _doing_?!”

He blinked at her, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Going to find out what _he's_ doing. Obviously.”

“You're  _ pregnant _ !”

“...yeah.” He blinked at her, then just rolled his eyes and hauled himself up onto the roof. He'd gotten good at this hauling himself up thing, between clambering up into rafters hauling himself along exposed pipes. Sure, it definitely was  _ harder _ now, because his stomach was sort of getting in the way, and he was actually slightly  _ heavier _ than he used to be. Dammit, he would have preferred to be  _ not _ pregnant while doing this, but yeah, he could still do it. 

“Xander! Get down you idiot!” Fry howled. 

He snorted, and leaned over the edge of the roof to wave at her, grinning. “Trust me, it ain't that bad. I'll see you later, okay? Provided Riddick isn't trying to flee the planet, because if  _ that's _ what he's doing, I’m following him.”

Snickering, he backed up, taking a running start, then leapt to the next roof. It was only about four feet across the short space between the two roofs, so it wasn't much of a challenge, but the next roof was going to be more of a doozy – nine feet across, or so. He knew it was the sort of thing he would have been able to do before – or at least, he was pretty sure it was – and yeah, maybe it would be a smarter idea to just try and take another route. 

But dammit, he was never going to be as good as Riddick if he didn't do this right.

So he braced himself on the back ledge of the roof, and threw himself forward, running as fast as he could. As his foot hit the edge closest to the other roof, he launched himself up and across the space. For a sickening moment, he actually thought he wasn't going to make it. But then his arms hit the ledge on the other roof, and he hauled himself quickly up onto the other side. His heart was beating too hard, and his arms seemed unimpressed with his daring acts of stupidity, but he couldn't stop grinning. It felt  _ good _ to do something kick ass.

Laughing despite himself, he dashed across this roof, and onto the next, and the next, though he was glad he'd hit a section of homes closer together and he didn't have to do any outrageous leaps like the last one had been. 

Despite his assuring Fry that he would be fine, Xander sort of wasn't surprised that Riddick was standing on his own roof, arms crossed, looking sort of pissed when he arrived. 

“Hey,” he grinned, trying for an innocent 'whatever could possibly by wrong' tone to his voice. “What's going on?”

Riddick frowned, and stepped up to him, running his fingers across his stomach. 

“Riddick. We've talked about this. You're doing the mama bear thing again. I thought we agreed that you weren't going to be _doing_ the mama bear thing anymore.”

He frowned, and promptly cuffed Xander upside the back of his head.

“Oi!” He yelped, surprised. “What was that for?”

“You are an idiot.” He growled. 

“Okay, yeah, I’ve heard that one before...” Xander cleared his throat, scratching the back of his neck. “And yeah, I often hear that one from you, but still. What'd I do that was so idiotic _this_ time? Oh wait. You mean the jumping thing, don't you? Okay, maybe I shouldn't have tried to jump that ledge, but I’m bored out of my tree, Riddick. So. What are _you_ doing out here?”

He frowned, and shrugged slightly. 

“...you're going out of your mind with boredom here, too, aren't you?” He snickered. 

Riddick gave him a dry look.

“Yep. You're not happy because there's no one to kill and nothing to do, and you just have to sit here and try to be quiet so no one sees you. It's driving me nuts, too.”

The other shook his head, and settled on the edge of the roof ledge.

Xander followed him, sitting silently beside him. It was a quiet section of town, so no one seemed to look up and see them. 

“You can't afford to be an idiot,” he rumbled. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Because I have a baby inside me.” He sighed softly, running his hand through his hair again. “I am getting _really_ sick of being seen as the _vessel_ of your baby, okay? I _am_ still Xander under this stomach.”

“A hormonal one,” Riddick muttered.

“Okay, calling your mate a hormonal mess? _Also_ not a good way to avoid pissing him off.”

He smirked. 

“I meant what I said earlier, by the way. Once this whole ordeal is done, I never want another child again. You get all super overprotective, like _way_ more than you are normally, which is kind of ridiculous. I mean, you're kind of the most overprotective person I have ever met. And _I_ know Giles.”

“I don't.” He said lightly. 

“Yeah, well... I’ll have to introduce him to you if I ever get you to Earth. And yes, I am planning on introducing you to him. I am actually planning on finding a way to get both of us to Earth. I think you'd _like_ killing vampires. But you have to promise to not freak out on my friends. And not knock me up about a dozen times more, got it?”

He snickered. 

Xander sighed, and leaned on his shoulder. “I have turned into a goddamn girl, haven't I?”

“No,” he smirked, scratching Xander's lower back. 

“Cause I sure feel like one, sometimes,” he sighed, closing his eyes behind those dark goggles. “So what _were_ you doing out here? Because it sort of seems, to me, like you were trying to scout out the place. Like you were _maybe_ trying to find someone to kill.”

Riddick smirked.

“Because, I mean, if you're in the mood for killing, I’m actually okay with that...” he smiled, hopefully. “Hell, I’ll even help.”

“You are _not_ killing.”

“It's not as though I’m not _able_ to do it,” he rolled his eyes. “I'm really _good_ at killing, these days, because of you. But yeah, I get it, I get it... you want me safe and cozy and protected at home. But I can totally take care of myself! It's not like I just sort of tumbled into this life!”

“You dropped on my head.”

Xander hesitated, and cleared his throat, scratching the back of his neck. “Oh right. Good point. I _did_. I just sort of dropped on you. Well, I didn't just sort of tumble into your _bed_!”

“You got drunk and demanded I fuck you.”

He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “Okay, yeah, I _did_. But getting drunk isn't the same thing as just tumbling into bed!”

“If that's what you want to believe.”

Xander grumbled, crossing his arms. “Okay, okay, fine. Your bitch is an idiot. I get it.”

Riddick just shook his head. 

“I _am_. I get it. I always have been.”

“Shut up.” he said firmly, twisting Xander so that he could face him, and took the teen's jaw in his hand, forcing him to look at him. “You're my mate. You carry my child. No harm will come to you.”

He flushed. “Oh. Right.”

Riddick waited for him to get it.

“ _Oh_. You um... you're being over-protective because of the whole mate thing. Will you go back to normal after he's born?”

He shrugged. “I suppose you'll have to see.”

Xander groaned.

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander hesitated as he was about to walk into the study of the large home, frowning. 

The Imam was standing near the doorway of the home, speaking in low tones to a man he didn't recognize. The man was dressed in the loose flowing robes that most of the people in New Mecca wore – robes that Xander hated and tried to avoid, though he did wear a long grey robe the Imam had insisted he needed over his regular clothes. (Funny, that he now thought of a sweater and cargos as normal, when back in Sunnydale he probably never would have been caught dead in something like this.) He glanced up when Xander started barefoot down the stairs, and froze, eyes wide. 

He arched a brow, and glanced at the Imam.

Who looked _guilty_ , and glanced away, quickly.

_Oh_ hell _no_ . 

“Hey, Imam...” he said lightly, padding down in his bare feet towards the door, and grinned at the men, innocently. He had made no efforts to stay inside while he was in his 'delicate state', but he had been wearing that robe to basically _hide_ from the normal people, at least. Now he didn't have that robe on, and the man talking to the Imam was gaping at him in shock. “Have you seen my boots? I think I must have put them somewhere.”

“They are in your room,” he said tightly, frowning. “Perhaps you should go find them, Xander.”

“Naw, I don't need to find them yet. I was just curious.” He stood beside him, casually, folding his hands behind his back, smiling casually at both of the men. “Whose your friend, Imam? We don't usually get to meet your friends.”

“This is Robi,” he frowned slightly, and turned to face Xander properly. “Xander...” he said, quietly. “Can I speak to you later, please? This is rather important, and...”

“Only if you tell me why you look like you're trying to hide the chocolate for yourself?” He smirked.

The Imam looked confused. 

“You look like you're hiding something,” he rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “So. Are you going to tell me what you're hiding, or am I going to have to stand here and freak out your friend Robi just by being pregnant?”

“I am hiding nothing.” He said, firmly. “Xander, please.”

He arched a brow. “Come on, Imam. You can tell me. I ain't gonna tell anyone  _else_ . Well, except maybe Riddick. I suppose I could tell him. Where is he, anyway? Haven't seen him all day.”

The holy man hesitated, and Xander knew instantly what the secret was.

His smile faded instantly.

“He's gone, isn't he?”

“Robi, give me a moment,” the Imam said, quickly, and his friend nodded, assuring him that it was all right, naturally. Taking Xander's arm, he hurried him towards the study, and lowered his voice. “I was rather hoping you wouldn't have to find out this way, but...”

“But he's gone.” He snapped. 

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“Son of a _bitch_!” Xander hissed, furiously. “Did someone figure out that he was here?!”

The Imam hesitated again. 

“...no one even found him.” He tightened his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms. “No merc has even _been_ here, has there?! Fuck! There's been – he just thought they might, didn't he?!”

He hesitated, and nodded, quietly. 

“So he _leaves_?! Now? Fuck, Imam, there's less than three weeks left before I have his fucking _baby_!”

Imam winced, and set his hands on Xander's shoulders, gently. “My child, listen to me. Riddick spoke to me before he left.”

“He spoke to _you_ , and not to _me_?! I’m his _mate_!”

“I know, I know,” he said, quickly. “Listen to me, my son. Riddick left out of concern for you and your child. Mercenaries may not have found him here _yet_ , but if they _had_ , surely they would have used the two of you against him, or perhaps just attacked you out of hatred of him.”

“Hey, no one even knows that Riddick has anything to do with me!”

“That is  _ possible _ , yes. But most of the inhabitants of Antonia Chillingworth's ship  _ are _ alive, Xander. It is possible that one of them perhaps overheard what went on in that arena, and are seeking the bounty on your mate through any means necessary.”

He paled.

“You understand, then. For the sake of your child, Riddick  _ had _ to leave.”

“If I hadn't been pregnant,” he hissed, “He would have taken me with him!”

“Perhaps.” he agreed.

“Then what is this  _ Robi  _ doing here?” He asked, displeased. 

“I am helping your lover cover his tracks,” he said, frowning. “He's generally quite good at doing that, but I feared that he might have not covered them from everyone.”

“Who the hell did he not manage to hide them from?!” He demanded. “The guy's a genius at that! Who could possibly track him when he decides to beat it?!”

“You, Xander.”

He gaped at him, stunned. “...you're covering his tracks so that  _ I _ can't find him?!”

“Yes.” He said, calmly.

“What the  _ hell _ , Imam?!” He roared, furiously. His heart was pounding so loud he could barely hear himself speak.

“ _ Calm down _ , Xander,” he said, resting his hands on his shoulders, trying to calm him down. “Working yourself into a frenzy will do neither you nor your child  _ any _ good. Please. We can talk about this when you have calmed down.”

“No, we are going to talk about this  _ now _ ,” he hissed, but he  _ did _ try to force himself to calm down. “You turn right around and go tell that Robi guy to go fuck off, because you don't  _ need _ to cover Riddick's tracks for him, because  _ I am going to hunt him down _ .”

“You will do no such thing.” Imam held him still. “You will stay here, and you will deliver your child in safety. Do you understand me?”

“You can't keep me here!”

“Please, Xander,” he said softly, squeezing his shoulders. “I think of you as a son. A friend that I wish nothing more for than to be happy and healthy. I have lost three of my sheep before, Xander. I intend not to lose you or your child.”

“It's not  _ fair _ ,” he hissed, and Xander would never say that he was crying. But he was, just a little, tears at the edges of his eyes. 

“I know, my son.” He smiled softly at him. “But please, wait, at least. Perhaps once your child has been born...”

“He better fucking come  _ back _ the second she's born!”

“I thought you were having a son,” The Imam smiled softly. He had heard that argument more times than he could remember, now.

“Nope. Knowing my luck, I’ll have a daughter exactly like her father. A bitch.”

He shook his head, laughing softly.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Repent! Repent for the end is near!”

Xander leaned on the wall of the small Mosque, watching the man, curiously. He was dressed in threadbare black robes, with silver jewelry on the back of the neck, that looked like a human spinal chord. It was an odd look. The man himself looked frenzied and sort of rumpled, and were he not standing in the sunlight, Xander would have been absolutely convinced that this man was a vampire. He certainly looked the part of the undead. 

“The Underverse is coming!”

The Imam was inside, and while Xander had given the whole 'holy services' thing a shot a couple of times, it just really wasn't his thing. Sure, he liked to think that maybe there was some higher power out there, but he really didn't think that the Imam's Allah was his. So he went out with him when the bells rang for prayers, because it gave him a chance to get out of the house – and at six full U.Y. months, he didn't get out of the house  _ much _ , so he took it when he had a chance – and he'd just wrap his cloak around himself as much as he could to hide his pregnancy – which was  _ very _ hard to hide, now – and watch people to his heart's content. But he didn't normally see people like  _ this. _

People were avoiding him. They were looking away, hurrying to their destinations, just trying to get away from this frenzied, sort of undead looking man. 

But Xander wanted to know what the hell an Underverse was, so he pushed off the wall, and approached the man. “Hello!”

The man started, quickly, and spun to look at him. 

“Hello,” he smiled, trying to look disarming, and headed towards him, keeping himself tightly wrapped up in his cloak, keeping his goggles firmly down. He was hardly about to burn his eyes out with the light of the sun. “I just wanted to talk to you, if that's all right... I was wondering what the Underverse was.”

The man gaped at him, eyes wide. 

“Um... hi. Underverse?”

“The Underverse!” the man cried, seeming to realize finally that someone actually  _ was _ showing some interest in what he wanted, and he shifted forward, smiling, looking eager and excited. “The Underverse is the end of all things! And it is coming to us!”

“Yeah, you said something about that,” Xander nodded, curiously. “So... what does it mean?”

“You live in the universe,” he said, smiling at him, almost too eagerly. “This is the universe in which we are, right now. But along with the universe, there is an Underverse It is the land of the dead, just as this is the land of the living.” 

Xander frowned, considering that. “Wait, so in the universe everyone is alive, and in the Underverse, everyone is dead?”

“The dead control the Underverse, they rule the Underverse It is where those who have lived in the universe go after their deaths,” he said, eagerly. “It is where we all will be, immortal in our deaths. We will be kings –  _ if _ we repent.”

“So wait...” he held up a hand. “It's heaven.”

“Heaven is a child's story,” he scoffed. “Created for savages on uneducated worlds. The Underverse is coming.”

“Well... how do you know?” He crossed his arms. “I mean, maybe I’m just a sceptic, but it sounds sort of silly, a whole verse of dead people.”

“No... no.” He grinned at Xander, reaching out to touch his arms. “Let me explain. Once, the verse was ruled by the Powers That Be. They created a pair of gods, beautiful strong warrior gods. They were identical in every way, but one was a tactical warrior, and one was a physical warrior. They were matched in every way – and they waged wars against each other. Massive wars that tore the verses apart, all of the verses. There were many, in those days, you see.”

“Sure,” Xander nodded, considering that. “I mean, that's always a possibility, I suppose. I’ve seen enough that I might even believe in a bunch of gods. So what did the two gods do?”

“They made a truce,” he said, eagerly. “To rule the verses together, as kings.”

“Ah, well, that makes sense.” He nodded, scratching his jaw. “So where does the Underverse come in?”

“One of the gods ruled the Underverse,” he said, nodding. “And the other ruled the universe. Together, they brought their kingdoms together, and together, they bore a race of people descended from these gods themselves.”

“Wait, I thought you said they were both men,” he pointed at him.

“Yes. They were.” The man nodded, fiercely. “And they bore a race of warriors, like they were. From those warriors rose the two lines, the Primes and the Alphas.”

Xander blinked at him, and frowned. “Wait... I’ve heard of Primes...”

Antonia had called  _ him _ a Prime.

“The primes, be they male or female, bear the children. The alphas, only if they are male, father them. The alpha females are – rare. At best. And sterile, but that is not what I need to tell you!” He shifted forward, clutching at Xander's arms again, only tighter this time, holding fiercely to him. His pale, bloodless face looked sort of frenzied, desperate. “Their race split into two warring factions, and the righteous won. The Necromongers won.”

“Necromongers,” he repeated, frowning. His arms hurt, where the man squeezed, but he was willing to listen. The man was... interesting, if not alarming. “And they believe that the Underverse is coming.”

“We  _ know _ that it is coming,” he said, fiercely. “They come to bring purity, order, completeness to the people of the universe. Underverse comes.”

“So we should repent,” he frowned, trying to pry the other man's fingers off of his arms. The man was far stronger than any other regular person he'd ever encountered. Hell, the man's grip was even slightly harder than Riddick's, which made no sense, as the skeleton man looked even smaller than him. He was going to have bruises.“And what does repentance get us?” 

“Repentance allows you to join the Necromonger nation, to become one of the purified. Only the purified will pass into the perfection of the Underverse”

“Ow, okay, I get it,” he finally forced the man's hands off of his arms. “Fuck. Okay. Well... what happened to the other race? The one that wasn't the Necromongers, the one that ruled the universe.”

“The Furyans.” He frowned. “They were destroyed.”

“Oh.” Xander blinked. “Doesn't sound terribly tolerate. I thought New Mecca was all about the tolerance and all.”

The man sneered. “Tolerance will destroy you all. The Purification is coming, the Necromongers are coming, and they will wipe clean all of the impure. Those who do not repent and submit to the purification will die in the pits as they watch those who will walk free as gods into the Underverse.”

“Okay, it's official, you're a nut-job.” He gaped at him. 

Pushing the stranger away, Xander headed towards the stairs, hoping that the Imam would come out of the Mosque soon. He really needed to talk to him. Maybe  _ he _ would know more about this Underverse thing. 

The man scrambled to catch the only audience he'd had all day, and caught his arm. 

Xander jerked his arm away from the stranger, which tugged the concealing cloak he was wearing open, revealing his pregnant stomach.

The man reeled back, gaping at him for a moment, then leapt forward again, grabbing Xander's goggles. Ignoring his cry of refusal, and before Xander could tug back away from him, he jerked those goggles right off of his face, exposing Xander's silver blue eyes. He sucked in a sharp breath, and jerked away from him, throwing up a hand to shade his eyes from the blindingly bright light of Helion's sun. 

“Furyan!” the man howled, pointing at him. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Xander snatched the goggles back out of the other's hand, and jerked them on, quickly. 

“ _ Furyan prime _ !” the man howled, which made absolutely no sense, since Xander was pretty sure this guy had  _ just _ said that the whole 'Furyan' race he'd been talking about had been completely wiped out, and he was  _ pretty _ sure he remembered being  _ not _ wiped out and being  _ alive _ . He struck out at Xander, trying to hit him, and  _ fuck _ , but the bastard was  _ fast _ .

Sure, Xander was usually faster. But about the exact moment that this man slammed his fist into Xander's temple, a ripple of agonizing pain rolled through his stomach and spine, and he howled in agony.

And his very first instinct said  _ run. Now _ .

And he did.

He'd learned to trust most of his instincts, after being with Riddick. But even if he hadn't, he was pretty sure that  _ this _ instinct would have taken control of him. It was powerful, it was consuming, and it said to protect his child at all costs.

So he ran, his booted feet slamming against the cobblestone streets, breathing ragged as he raced. Pain rippled through him every few moments, but he couldn't pause.

Once, his mother had made the same run, on Earth.

Nearly sobbing with pain, Xander stumbled into the Imam's house, and dropped to his knees, crying out again. “ _ Fry _ !” He screamed. “Oh  _ god _ Fry, I need you, please!  _ Fry _ !”

There was a clattering on the stairs, as the blond woman scrambled down the stairs. “What is –  _ Xander _ ?!”

“Fry,” he sobbed in pain, fingers clenched on the floor, gagging. “I think it's – nnngh, labour...”

“Oh Allah,” she groaned, scrambling to help him up. 

Xander whimpered, but let her haul him up to his feet, and leaned heavily on her as she helped him upstairs. If he knew  _ anything _ about labour at all, he would have known that it was harder than usual, stronger than the beginning of labour typically was. It was already like the final stages, hard and painful. This was  _ likely _ because Xander wasn't a typical pregnant woman. Hell, he wasn't a woman at all. For a pregnant man – and yes, such a thing apparently existed – his labour was fairly typical.

Fry helped him onto his bed, then scrambled to grab some blankets, throwing them over him. “I'll – ah. Where's Imam?!”

“Mosque,” he said, through gritted teeth, and cried out. “Fuck!”

“Oh shit, oh  _ shit _ , oh –  _ shit _ !” Fry howled, and pointed at him. “Are you going to be okay, for just a minute? I just need to get the Imam, he'll know what to do... he's the one who planned what to do... fuck...”

“I'm  _ fine _ .” He grunted, through grit teeth. 

“Oh – okay.” Fry scrambled out of the room, and he could hear her feet thudding down the stairs like an elephant on stampede, then the door slammed open, and never closed.

“Oh great, Fry, that's exactly –  _ fuck _ !” He arched up, sucking in a sharp breath. It hurt worse than the Dentist's torture had, and that was  _ really _ saying something, because  _ that _ had hurt like a son of a bitch. This was agony, pure torture as the child that he'd been carrying around tried to get out, and his muscles tried to help.

The Imam and Fry returned, eventually, though time had lost all meaning to him. It could have been ten seconds for all he knew. 

The Imam knew what he was doing. Thank any god that would listen for that.

It was bloody, it was painful. 

But Fry squeezed Xander's hands tightly as he struggled through the process, and he was eternally grateful to that tight grip. Still, finally she let out a cry of pleasure, delighted, and the Imam gathered a small, blood-covered infant into a blanket he'd prepared for this. 

Fry darted to look, and cried, “A girl! A girl, Xander!”

He laughed softly, and flopped back on the bed, bonelessly. He smiled up at the ceiling for a moment, waiting for the sound he knew he was supposed to hear next. 

And didn't.

Xander pushed himself up onto his elbows, panting as he looked up at the holy man. “Imam. She's not crying.”

The Imam looked up, and he wasn't smiling. 

“Imam,  _ why isn't she crying _ ?!”

  
 

\---

  
 

“Take a step closer, and I remove your liver from your fat guts.”

The merc that had been stepping up towards the table hesitated, not really sure what to make of the young man sitting in the corner, chair tilted back on its back legs, ankles crossed on the edge of the table. His face was obscured by the hood of the massive, heavy looking cloak he wore, and he nursed a large glass of an amber liquid.

“What,” the merc cleared his throat. “You ain't looking for a job?”

“A job changes things.” 

He grinned, and shifted forward to tug one of the chairs out from under the table, sitting. Setting his own glass down on the table, he offered his hand. “Name's Dax. And you are...?”

“Waiting to hear about the job.”

“Right.” he tugged his hand back to himself, and took a swig of his glass. “I saw what you did, yesterday, to Mercer. Practically skinned the guy.”

There was a soft snicker from under that hood. “He pissed me off.”

“He pissed  _ everyone _ off, but most people don't manage to  _ skin _ him cause he did. I mean, that's a pretty neat job, you did, too. It would be handy to have a man like you on board a crew. Hell, you could cut a six man crew down to three. That makes splitting the bounty much nicer, don'tcha think?”

“The greed is the creed.”

“You see my point?” He grinned. 

“I'm still waiting to hear on this job.”

Dax cleared his throat, and nodded, frowning slightly. “You heard about the bounty on Riddick?”

“Seven hundred thou and some spare change.”

He grinned, briefly, clearly impressed by the hooded man's knowledge of the bounty itself. “Yep. Absolutely. That's a hell of a ton of money to split, even if it's being split three ways. So I been planning on taking that on. And looking for a good crew to do it. I hear Riddick's good with a knife... figure another man good with a knife might be a good thing to have.”

“I need a full third, and I won't go in cryo.”

Dax hesitated. “...you won't go in cryo.”

“No.” He said firmly, crossing his arms. “I won't go into cryo. I don't care if the rest of the crew does, and I will take care of bringing my own protein. But I won't go into cryo.”

He frowned. “I suppose that could be arranged...”

“Then I’ll consider yer offer.”

Dax gaped at him. “ _ Consider _ ?! You ain't gonna  _ get _ a better offer than this!”

“Maybe not. But I will consider your offer.”

“Now see here, kid - “

“If you want someone with skills comparable to Riddick's, you have to take someone with skills comparable to Riddick's. I’ve got those skills. So if you want to take down the biggest goddamn bounty in the verse, then you'll let me  _ consider _ your  _ offer _ .”

“Fine.” Dax snapped, and pushed off the table, storming away. 

As soon as the merc was gone, the man groaned softly, and slumped back in his seat, as though he'd been holding his breath while Dax was there, and now that he was gone, he was able to relax a little bit. That was the  _ fourth _ offer he'd been granted that evening alone. And that was both wonderful and terrible at the same time. 

“Dax would stab you in the back the second he's caught Riddick.”

The hooded man looked up from his drink, frowning as he considered the tall, scruffy man leaning on the back of the chair Dax had been sitting in. This newcomer had scruffy sideburns that turned into equally scruffy mutton chops, and he was grinning easily, lazily. Everything about him looked relaxed and comfortable. 

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. That's absolutely so. Dax is a dick. A  _ greedy _ dick. And hell, I ain't gonna lie to you and say I ain't greedy, because we both know what line of work we're in, don't we, but I ain't  _ that _ greedy. I know the value of a good crew, and I pay my crew. I also ain't gonna lie to you and pretend we can do it with three. I’m settin' up a four man crew. And shit, yeah, I want a man with a knife like yours.”

“A fourth is a big drop from a third.”

“Sure is, but my bird's got comfortable seats, and I won't even suggest you gotta go in cryo. Hell, I don't like cryo myself. I hate missin' out on things.”

“What do I call you, then?” He asked, reaching forward to grab his whiskey, sipping.

“Toombs.” 

“You make an interesting case, Toombs.” He drawled. “But I can't say I  _ trust _ you.”

“Naw, I don't trust no one neither.”

He swung his crossed ankles off of the table, and stood. “I'm gonna seriously consider yer offer, Toombs.”

“You've been telling everyone that.”

“Yep.” He drawled. “I told you. I need to consider the offers.”

“Xander.” Toombs said, drawing him up short. “What, that is the name, right? I did pronounce that right?”

Frowning, the hooded man – and yeah, that hooded man was one Xander Harris – tugged his hood back, dropping it back onto his shoulders. He had long, curly hair pulled back into a long braid, out of which bits of curls were trying to creep out. He wore solid, black framed goggles, with large round black lenses, like he was an aviator or something, these days. The grey cloak he wore matched a threadbare grey crocheted sweater – Riddick's old sweater had been worn until it was literally falling apart - over a long sleeved grey shirt and heavy looking camouflaged cargo pants. “And how the fuck did you find out who I am?”

“Lavelle Alexander Harris.” Toombs grinned, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. “I'm a  _ good _ bounty hunter, Xander. I do my research.”

He nodded, jaw set firmly. “We leaving in the morning, then?”

The merc grinned, broadly. “Naw. Gotta still get the rest of the crew together. A week from the morning, dock B-334.”

“Meet you at the docks, then,” he nodded, and Xander slid past the table, heading towards the bar door, then turned back to grab his glass, downing the last of it before marching right back out the door. 

Toombs grinned.

Xander walked for about twenty five feet before he slumped back against a handy wall, leaning back into the wall, panting softly. He felt like everything had been drained out of him, leaving him empty, like a jar that had been broken and all of what was inside was poured onto the floor. 

It was a busy spot, with people jostling and moving about, pushing through the crowd. There was a marketplace of some kind here, in this little junction of the halls of the merc planet, which was the only reason Xander had stopped here to relax. He could never do this in someplace where his weakness, his exhaustion, his stress, could be seen plainly. He had to hide it, if he could.

“Show them no weakness.” A voice rumbled in his ear, a light touch of lips to his earlobe.

A shudder of familiarity shot up his spine, and he spun to look up at the speaker. He wore a black hood a lot like the one Xander had been wearing before, obscuring his face, but he knew perfectly well who that familiar person was, even if he hadn't seen him in  _ years _ . “What are you  _ doing _ here?” he gasped.

“Gathering information on who is looking for me,” Riddick smirked. “Hear you're coming after me.”

Xander grinned, teeth bared. “Well, it didn't look like you were coming back to me, so yeah, I’m coming to get you. Apparently it worked without me even having to do a thing.”

Riddick hooked his fingers in the front of Xander's shirt, and tugged him back along the hallways that made up the Tangiers' colony.

“Where's your room?” Xander asked, his own fingers curled over the other's hands, eagerly. He was totally okay with being dragged along behind the other man as they headed to how knows where. He had spent over four years trying to figure out where the hell his mate had been hiding. Four fucking  _ years _ . 

“Don't have one.” 

Xander hesitated. “Okay, then... then we'll go to mine. I assume you can tell where we're going? I mean, like... smell or something...”

“Wasn't really planning on bothering with a room.” Riddick smirked, and slammed his fist against the button that opened a fairly small storage locker. He stepped inside, tugging Xander inside with him, smirking mischievously. 

He laughed softly, and hit the button that closed the door, locking it firmly. 

Riddick grinned, and slammed Xander against the wall, slamming his mouth over his, devouring him. 

Xander had wanted to talk to him. He'd wanted to ask where the hell he had been, why he hadn't been there when he'd delivered, why he hadn't said anything to him before he just  _ left _ . He'd wanted to make sure that Riddick would agree to bring him with him when he left again. But he completely forgot about every thought of that the moment that Riddick started taking the exact thing he'd  _ really _ missed for the last four years.

And dude, four years without getting laid? 

He wanted nothing more than everything. So he slammed back into him, kissing him fiercely, throwing his arms around Riddick's neck, holding tightly to him. And buried his fingers in  _ hair _ that Riddick had, which freaked him out a little, but that could be worse. “Fuck,  _ Riddick _ ...”

“Exactly.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Balancing a tray, Xander headed into the room that he'd been renting while he was on Tangiers. He hated the planet and he hated its artificial living spaces, but at least he had a little space to call his own while he was here. He kicked the button that slid the door closed behind him, and headed over to the bed, which was pretty large considering how small the place itself was. 

Riddick was sitting on the bed, naked, polishing the ulaks that Xander had been keeping with him for four years, and didn't look up when he set the tray on the bed, and clambered onto it beside him. 

“Not planning on taking my blades away from me, are you?” Xander smirked.

“Considering it.”

“Yeah, thought you might be,” he smirked, and offered Riddick a bowl of the heavy stew he'd picked up for food. “I think you need some food. You're looking a little rougher around the edges than you used to.”

He snorted. He'd shaved, within a few minutes of arriving in Xander's room – which was a couple hours after they had first run into each other in the hallway, as they'd been rather distracted – and he looked more like himself, with his head shaved. But he was still dirtier than he usually was, his nails black under the edges, and when he smiled in the near blackness of the room, it didn't quite reach those silver eyes. And he  _ did _ look thinner. Not less muscled, just thinner, like he'd still been working to maintain what he had, but just hadn't been eating properly. It worried Xander, actually. 

Setting the blades aside, the other man took the bowl, and started eating with the spoon. 

Xander grinned, relieved, and settled in to pick up the other bowl, spooning the thick, meaty stew into his mouth, pleased. It was warm and rich, and it made him relax, crossing his legs as he ate. “So I was thinking. There are some questions I had, you know?”

He grunted.

“Well, you had to figure that questions were going to come  _ eventually _ .” He pointed out. “I mean, you fucked off before some major shit went down, and didn't even  _ tell _ me that you were going to, either, you just sort of did it, and told  _ Imam _ that you were going, instead of telling me!”

He watched him, quietly, still eating, not saying anything.

Xander sighed, and leaned back, taking a deep breath. He ate a few more spoonfuls of his stew, then said, “Imam said you left just in case someone managed to track you back to Helion and figured out that I was somehow connected to you.”

“They know who you are.” He frowned. “The mercs have records on you now.”

“I've heard,” he cleared his throat. “But I’ve been living as a merc for almost four years now, Riddick. I’ve done research. I can't find any evidence that there's a bounty on me, and yeah, some of the files say that I’ve been seen with you. But none of them mention my being pregnant or anything. So I figured... I’ve got a shot. I’ll just tell people I wanna track you down because you betrayed me earlier or something. It seems to be working, so far. Hell, you saw how many mercs wanna hire me.”

“You're too good at your job.” He frowned.

Xander snickered, amused, and reached over to skim his fingers lightly over Riddick's smooth, hairless scalp. “Sorry, Riddick. That's what I do, I guess. I mean, not that I’ve ever been accused of being  _ too _ good at something before, not ever, but... yeah. You ran off, left me pregnant and alone in New Mecca with Imam and Fry, and... that was it. Fuck it, Riddick, I needed you there, and you just left, and goddammit, that was all I had.”

“And yet here you are. In space.” He set the bowl down, and crossed his arms. “And with no child.”

“Yeah well... you wouldn't know about that, would you? You weren't  _ there _ .”

Riddick considered Xander for a few long minutes, just looking at him. It was an intense sort of expression. “What happened?”

“She didn't cry,” Xander said, expression flat, no life in his silver eyes. “She was born, and she didn't cry. You figure it out.”

A dark shadow flickered across Riddick's expression.

“I'm going to go get cleaned up. I stink.” Xander said, face still blank, and slid off of the bed, heading to the small bathroom attached to his rented room. Flicking the shower on, he kicked off his boots, and tugged off his clothes, stepping into the water. It was cold, but he'd sort of gotten used to cold showers – turns out that in most of the verse, they were used to only having hot water when they were on board a ship, because there the water was kept warm by being stored next to the engines, but on planets, the water was typically freezing. 

Sliding the frosted glass door shut behind him, Xander pressed his forehead against the wall, relieved for the cold water pounding down on his head, eyes tightly closed. The shower was even darker than the rest of the room had been, which meant it was  _ very _ dark, almost black. It was twilight in the rest of the room, but it was night here.

But he still heard when the door slid open behind him, then closed.

Xander didn't move. There was no way he was going to move, because then Riddick would see that he was trying to hide tears, and tears were the last thing he wanted his convict lover to see. 

Riddick stepped up against his back, blocking the water from hitting him, and ran his fingers lightly over Xander's messy braid. Fuck, he'd forgotten to take that out when he'd made his flee to the bathroom, it was going to be an absolute bitch to take out, later. But those light fingers kept running neatly over his shoulders, down his neck, up to his jaw, and across those tear stained cheeks. Riddick didn't say anything, just kept his light fingertips running over him.

And Xander absolutely fell apart.

He slumped back against his chest, shoulders shaking, breath catching sharply as he sobbed, agonizing and hard. He had been in space, alone, for four years, trying to find his mate, trying to get the hell away from all that he had left behind on Helion, and for four years, he hadn't cried.

Now he couldn't stop.

_ Now _ , when he felt most like he had to prove that he was strong, prove that he was tough, prove that he had what it took to be strong and manly and virile,  _ now _ he collapsed and sobbed.

Riddick didn't say a word. He just held the younger man against his chest, silently, fingers still skimming over his face, his collarbone, his stomach. Whether he really felt that Xander was being weak with this display of emotion or not, he never said it. He just kept stroking him, petting him like an animal trainer might pet a skittish animal, shockingly simple. 

The tears did fade, finally, and Xander swiped at his eyes with the heels of his hands, bruisingly hard. “Fuck. Sorry.”

Riddick pressed his lips to Xander's temple, and still didn't speak. 

“Shit. Haven't done that in years.” He cleared his throat, leaning back, baring his throat to the man standing behind him. “Decades, maybe. I hate being weak.”

“You're not weak,” he rumbled, and Xander smiled softly, closing his eyes. It was the most intense comfort he'd felt in years, maybe even his whole life, to lean back against that strong chest and feel a heart beat pounding in time with his own against his skin. 

“Bullshit, but it's still nice of you to say,” he murmured, and twisted in Riddick's arms, facing him. “Are you staying, this time?”

He met his eyes, silver for silver, but didn't answer.

“I'd rather you stayed,” Xander said lightly, reaching up to curl his fingers around the back of the other's neck, rubbing the skin softly. “After all, it's not like there's a child to worry about. And if we  _ are _ mates, then... well. I’d sure as hell like it better if we were together.”

The water was slamming cold and hard into them, wiping away some of the traces of the years that had been between them. 

“We could find a place,” Xander said softly. “There has to be somewhere safe for freaks like us. A place where mercs won't find us, where we can kill all the people you want... where we can fight and bleed and kill and fuck and  _ live _ . There has to be a place like that. I know it'll be hard to find, but... lighting out with mercenaries, to try and find you all the time? Wears on a person, you know. And I dunno if you've been sleeping around out there, but... there's no way I could. Never. I can still feel my heart speed up whenever you get in a fight. I don't think that's  _ normal _ , Riddick.”

“You wanted to be normal?”

He snorted softly, and squirmed closer into the other's chest, kissing his jaw, lightly. “I don't think normal has mates and getting a man pregnant. I really don't think it does. So screw normal. But I’d still like to have you  _ here _ .”

Riddick smirked, and kissed him firmly. 

Xander groaned, and clung to his arms, pleased. “Still... I can take care of myself. You don't have to try to protect me...”

“Take care of yourself? Like you took care of yourself on Hades?”

“Hey...” Xander protested, flushed.

“Like you took care of yourself on the Dark Athena? Like you took care of yourself on Chillingworth's ship?”

“That's not fair, Riddick...”

“Like you took care of our  _ child _ ?”

His face twisted, and he slammed the heels of his hands sharply into Riddick's chest, shoving him away from him. “ _ Fuck. Off _ .”

Riddick rocked back on his heels, frowning as he watched Xander. 

“For someone who is obsessive about protecting their prime,” Xander snarled, teeth bared, viciously. “You did a piss poor job of it. I was alone. Imam's a good guy, Fry's a good woman, but they ain't you. So don't even fucking say that I didn't protect her well enough, because neither did you, you son of a bitch.”

He slammed his fist into the wall beside Xander's head, cracking the tiles. 

Xander didn't flinch.

There was a tick in Riddick's cheek, as he grit his teeth so hard that Xander could actually hear the grinding of teeth on teeth. He lifted his head, meeting that intense glare head on.

Riddick growled, and slammed forward, kissing Xander fiercely, claiming his mouth with a ferocity that would have made a lesser man quail. Instead, Xander arched up into that fierce crushing mash of teeth and tongue, biting at the other's lips as fiercely as Riddick turned it to him, cutting and nipping, so that it was a bloody, violent messy kiss. 

It wasn't love.

But it sure as hell wasn't hate, either.

  
 

\---

  
 

When there was pounding on the door like there was now, it usually meant that there was an apocalypse, or a horde of the living dead marching on the high school, or a rampaging monster, or the local werewolf pack had started rampaging. So naturally, she hurried to check on the door, tugging it open. 

But instead of seeing a bloody Slayer or an angry horde of vampires, it was an eager, beaming Willow Osbourne, clutching her laptop to her chest. 

“Hi, Jessica!” She chirped, eagerly. 

“Willow. Hello. Come in,” she stepped back, to let her room to come inside. The redhead darted inside, followed by a currently blue-haired Oz, who appeared as taciturn as ever, despite the toddler currently chewing on his ear. “Hello Oz, Remy.”

The little boy let out a squeal of happiness, and held his arms out to her.

Jessica laughed softly, and scooped him out of his father's arms, settling him on her hip. “Rupert is in the library, if you needed him. He might be doing research, but you know you can always interrupt that if you need to... what  _ did _ you need?”

Remy played with Jessica's hair as she bounced him on her hip.

“I got an email.” She beamed. “From Xander.”

“Oh god,” Jessica said eagerly, shifting forward. “Oh thank god...”

“I got it all translated up,” she beamed, patting her computer. “Wanna go read it in the dining room with Giles? Maybe he wants to see what Xander has to say, too...”

“Yes,” she said, firmly, and all but ran towards the dining room, sort of jogging as she moved. Remy squealed on her hip, delighted, bouncing as she hurried, and when they reached the dining room, he squealed again and reached his chubby little hands out towards Giles, eagerly. “Papa papa papa papa papa!”

The librarian looked up from the Enochian text, surprised, but grinned despite himself when he spotted the toddler, and held out his hands for him.

Remy scrambled out of Jessica's arms and into Giles, tugging on his tie, giggling. 

“So,” Giles asked, brushing the toddler's shockingly orange curls back. “To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit? Was Remy chewing on the wires again?”

“They got an email from Xander,” Jessica slid into the seat beside Giles'. 

“Oh! That is  _ excellent _ news!” He grinned up at the younger couple, pleased. “Did he receive the email you sent him back?”

“Nope, don't think so,” she settled at the other side of the massive table,opening up the laptop and flicking through it. “This one's a couple years old, too. He said he wanted to get a letter out just before he went on some super long trip... but it took even longer for the email to get here than last time. I guess he must have been further away this time, or something.”

Jessica nodded, fairly thrumming in her seat, looking anxious. 

Willow turned the laptop around, beaming at her. “Yeah, he wrote it in that same language as last time, he did, but I’ve got it all translated up for you to read.”

“Thanks,” she smiled, a little sheepish about her anxiety, but tugged the computer closer. 

Leaning on Giles' shoulder, she smiled slightly when Remy twisted some of her hair around his fingers, and started reading aloud again. “ _ Hey there Wills. Hope you're doing awesome. I’m doing okay. Mostly okay. Remember how I said I was travelling with those two guys? Well, I still am, sort of. Turns out Johns is a complete bastard who likes taking advantage of his so-called friends, so he sort of got himself stabbed and now I’m mostly just travelling with Riddick. Remember that I said he was so hot Buffy would totally want him? Oh hell yeah. You get to know him longer, and he gets even more like that.” _

Giles laughed softly, rubbing the back of Jessica's neck, lightly. “He's a unique sort of boy, isn't he?”

Jessica smiled up at him, and glanced over at Willow, smiling at her. The younger woman beamed, eyes crinkling. “ _ I'm going on a big long trip, two years and a bit. Johns is trying to drag Riddick off to some planet he doesn't want to go to, and I’m following to try and help him get out of there. Did I tell you that when I landed in space, I landed on Riddick's head? I can't remember if I told you that. But I did. He's like the only friend I’ve got out here.” _

“Xander can make friends really easy though,” Willow frowned. “I would think he could make friends, still...” 

“It may not be so simple out in space,” Giles laughed softly, reaching over to pat her hands. 

“ _ I gotta go,”  _ Jessica finished reading the letter.  _ “But I wanted to send out a note just before I left. Tell my mom I love her. Xander. Oh, and tell her that 'Lavelle' means prince. It's not a name, it's a title.” _

“Cool,” Oz considered that for a moment, and nodded.

“ _ Prince _ ?” Jessica repeated.

“Well.” Giles frowned slightly, considering that. He was bouncing Remy on his knees, however, so it looked less serious and intent than it usually would have. “I suppose that might explain a lot about him, wouldn't it?”

“Rupert,” Jessica swatted his arm, and he laughed.

“Daddy?” Remy called.

“Heya, big boy, c'mere.” Oz reached across the table, and the toddler reached his arms out eagerly, scrambling into his arms, happily. 

Jessica smiled softly as she watched the toddler that had been unofficially deemed her grandson. He was getting big, quickly, which was probably because of his unique 'condition' – apparently werewolves always had werewolf children. He was playing with his father's blue hair, happily, bouncing on his legs. If Xander had been here, still, would he be the one bouncing his son on his knee? She'd always thought Willow and he would have fallen in love, like she and Tony had in high school... but they all knew how well  _ that _ had worked out.

There was a hammering pounding on the door – again – and Jessica swore under her breath, hopping up. “I'll go see who that is...”

This time, it  _ was _ a blood-covered slayer.

“Faith!” She gasped, reaching out for the girl, tugging her inside the house, shocked. “What happened?! Do you need Giles?”

“Actually... I need to talk to you.” She reached up to push her hair back, where it stuck to her forehead, sticky with blood. “I don't suppose... by any chance... you might have revoked your ex-husbands invitation to your house?”

“Revoked... I don't understand, Faith, that's for vampires.”

When the dark haired, dark eyed slayer looked back at her with a steady expression, her eyes widened, startled. “Oh god, Faith, someone turned that son of a bitch?”

She nodded, looking genuinely alarmed by this information. “I fought him, but he caught me off guard, and I don't know where he is now. But he  _ could _ be coming here, so... I thought I should warn you if nothing else. I mean, it could be safe as houses, but if it ain't...”

“Of course. Rupert!”

A few moments later, a frowning Giles stepped out of the dining room, and stopped when he spotted Faith. Alarmed, he stepped forward, checking on his Slayer. “Faith! Good lord, what happened to you?”

“A vampire named Tony Harris,” Jessica said, frowning.

“Oh, well, to be fair, I guess, Tony didn't do  _ most  _ of this.” Faith waved at her face. “I was fighting a whole nest, it was totally kick ass though, I would've been five by five if he hadn't shown up and went all 'hey, you're the bitch who was at the divorce proceedings' and he caught me all off guard and dammit, that sucked, so he got me in the face.”

“And he got away,” Giles said, slowly. She hadn't even had to say it.

“Can we revoke the invite now, or is it too late?” Jessica glanced over at him. “Can we do that?”

“It'll take a bit to get the ingredients together and things,” he frowned, but nodded. “We can do that, though. I’ll gather the things up. Faith, why don't you get yourself cleaned up, then come and give me a hand?”

“I can give you a hand without getting cleaned up,” she pouted.

“Please,” Giles said firmly, in a voice that brooked no arguments. “I'd really rather you not get blood all over Jessica's nice clean house.”

“Fine... fine. Using your upstairs bathroom, though, it's nicer!” She laughed, and darted upstairs, in her boots still, just laughing when Giles called for her to take them off before she got graveyard dirt all over the carpet.

Jessica sighed softly, rubbing her forehead, but it wasn't the potential muddy carpets that bothered her. 

“Jessica? Giles?” Willow padded out into the hall with them, Remy balanced on her hip. He was chewing on an Arrowroot cookie, which Jessica and Giles always kept a constant supply of in the kitchen cupboard, be it for Remy when he visited, or for just in case Xander, who loved them, ever managed to make it home. “What's going on?”

“We need to do a revocation of invitation on the house,” Giles sighed softly. “Do you want to help?”

She winced slightly. “No, no thank you. Maybe Oz will help, but I’d rather just stay away, you know... Remy and I will just play in the living room, if that's all right...”

“Of course, dear,” Jessica leaned over to kiss the top of Remy's head, then pecked Willow's forehead, lightly. “Go take him to play.”

“Thanks, Jessica,” she smiled, and bounced her son, heading towards the door.

Which was when the front door of the house splintered open, chunks of wood flying in through the air, slamming into the walls and the floor. Standing in the doorway, lit from behind by the porch light, stood a dirt covered Tony Harris, in full game face, yellow eyes baleful and vicious as he looked in. “Well well well what  _ have _ we here?”

“Tony!” Jessica gasped, backing up sharply. 

“Well, if it ain't my cheating wife and her bastard new husband,” He stepped over the threshold, and Jessica's last hope that maybe because this wasn't where he had lived anymore that he wouldn't be invited in disappeared instantly. “And that little bitch that used to pester me... and a tasty little morsel. A buffet! Oh Jessica. You shouldn't have.”

“Get out of this house, Tony, and we won't stake you.”  _ Now _ .

“Oh Jessica. Little Jessie. That's not how it works, darling.” He grinned, and stepped closer to her. She backed up, naturally, wishing to all hell that she'd thought to put a cross or a stake or  _ something _ in the hallway. “I'm going to kill you. I’m going to make you pay for what you did to me, you self-righteous little  _ bitch _ .”

She backed right into Giles' chest, and she jumped, startled. 

Which is when Tony leapt forward, fangs bared, impatient to sink his teeth into Jessica's throat. 

Giles pushed Jessica behind him, quickly, and slammed his fist into the side of Tony's head, knocking him back off the side. Furious, Tony leapt forward again, and Giles slammed his elbow into the same place he'd hit before, just trying to cause as much damage to him as possible, and slammed his knee up into the doubled man's chest. Tony didn't  _ need _ to breathe, but he was new enough at being a vampire that it was still instinct to try. 

Tony tumbled to the floor, landing on top of a chair that had actually been a wedding gift from his mother, once upon a time, breaking it apart into pieces.

And an angry, protective Giles snatched a broken leg out of that pile of wood pieces, then grabbed Tony's shoulders and hauled him up, slamming him against the wall. Ignoring the furious howls the man let out, he bared his teeth at him, himself, and slammed the makeshift stake into the man's heart.

“No!” he cried.

And then he dusted, pieces of alcoholic asshole bursting over the room and settling lightly on top of all of them. 

“Oh god.” Jessica blinked.

Faith came down the stairs then, barefoot finally, and blinked at the mess. “....and here I thought  _ I _ was the nightmare to cleanliness in this house. You five by five, there, Jess?”

She cleared her throat, and looked up at the slayer. “Five by five, Faith.”

“Knew you would be,” she grinned, and darted down the last steps of the stairs, throwing her arm around Jessica's shoulder, leaning on her a little. “Damn. Nice to know you got a man that does the good old fashioned staking for you, though, huh?” 

“And that, according to Ethan, was Ripper.” Willow said at last. She had looked on sort of stunned, the whole time, holding her son close. 

Jessica arched a brow, and glanced at Giles. “Rupert... the  _ children _ know about your ex, too?”

He cleared his throat. “Not right now, Jessica, darling...”

“ _ Ex _ ?” Faith blinked, then grinned deviously at her. “You  _ dated _ that Looney Tunes?!”

Giles winced slightly, clearing his throat again.

“Oops.” Jessica smirked, feeling a little better about it. “Now. Someone please get me the dustbuster, we need to vacuum up Tony.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“Almost thought you weren't coming there, kiddo.”

Xander hated to admit that he wasn't surprised in the slightest that when he'd woken up the morning before he was  _ supposed _ to meet Tombs and head out on a mission to hunt down Riddick, that he awoke alone. He'd been waking up with muscled arms wrapped around him for six days, now, so waking up alone really sucked.

But he knew why he did it.

Riddick wanted to keep him safe by leaving him to face the verse  _ without _ the most dangerous convict in the verse in his bed, but still. It fucking sucked. Hopefully they could find some way to get the bounty  _ off _ of Riddick, though he had absolutely no idea how one would do that, and then they could go to being just two men. Who liked sleeping together. 

A lot.

Xander dropped his kit bag just inside the door of Toombs' ship, and nodded at him, grunting slightly. “Hey.”

“Ready to head out?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, running his hand through his bangs. “I'm all set.”

“All right even with the goggles?” he smirked. “Didn't used to wear those before, did you?”

Xander hesitated, seriously considering for a moment just bolting. Screw the potential of finding Riddick and finding a way to get the bounty off his head. He had a  _ plan _ for that, and it involved catching Riddick and putting him in prison and getting him back out of it without anyone knowing, so they'd stop trying to catch him. But this, if Toombs  _ did _ know something he shouldn't, that could monkey wrench things... “No, I didn't. But I got light sensitive. Few years ago.”

“Light sensitive?” Toombs frowned slightly. “Sounds like shit. I’ll dim the lights a little for you, if you think that'll help.”

“Yeah, it might.” He relaxed a little, again, and glanced around. “Which seat is mine?”

“One in the back, lots of open room back there. I wantcha to be able to burst out, blades a flying, if you need to,” he grinned, and settled into the captain's chair, himself.

Xander nodded, and sat in the seat that was apparently his. 

“Fancy a drink, 'fore we take off, mate?” Toombs bolted up again, offering him a flask. The man seemed to have a boundless store of energy, always bouncing about. “Might do you good.”

“I greatly doubt that,” he smirked, but took the flask anyway, and took a swig. “Thanks.”

“You can drink the last of that if you want... I got enough of my own,” he grinned, tugging out another one. “Sort of might call me a bit of a problem drinker, I suppose... but only if you've got a problem with my drinking.”

Xander snorted. He sort of liked this Toombs and his self-deprecating drawl. He was sort of fun.

Sort of like Johns, actually. Only slightly less of a user bastard.

“So... when'll the others be getting here?” Xander took a swig of the flask Toombs had given him. It ran smooth and rich down his throat, and he swallowed, relaxing, leaning back in his chair, then hesitated. His vision didn't seem quite... right. It was sort of blurred in the edges. 

“Oh, soon.” Toombs said lightly. “How you doing?”

“I'm starting to feel sort of weird.” He straightened up, then clutched at the arms of the chair, tightly, eyes wide. He felt abruptly nauseous, and his vision was swirling around in alarming ways. “Fuck, what was  _ in _ that drink...?”

“Oh, nothing special. Good whiskey... a powerful tranquilizer...”

“What - ?!” Xander bolted up, then sagged back into his seat, struggling to stay up. “Oh fuck...”

“Just relax, Xander.” The man smirked, watching him.

“Fuck. You.” 

Scratch that. He was just as big a user as Johns had been. 

Fuck.

Xander couldn't remember really falling asleep, but he did remember waking up, bolting up in the seat that he was apparently cuffed into, gasping. His goggles were gone, he knew that instantly, and it  _ hurt _ , there was a bright light shining right in his goddamn eyes. “Fuck,” he hissed, squeezing his eyes shut, trying not to get blinded.

“Hey, Xander buddy, good to see you awake.” 

Xander cracked open a single eye. Toombs was leaning over his chair, one of his hands resting on the arm of Xander's chair, lazily. The man grinned to see his eyes open. “I can see why you've gone light sensitive. You have Riddick eyes.”

“Bullshit,” he said, calmly, and tried to act normally. Inside, he was shaking. Externally, he looked fine. 

“Xander... I was on Antonia's ship. Ye don't have to bullshit me. What happened to the kid you were carrying four years ago?”

Xander stilled, and sat motionless for a very long moment.

“Yeah, Xander. I know. Now.” He leaned back, resting his foot on the edge of Xander's chair, and leaned on the instrument panel beside him. He picked one thing up from the counter beside him, and Xander hissed when he realized that the man was holding his ulaks. Now he sort of wished that Riddick had taken them from the room before he left, because now he was going to lose them. Dammit. He tapped the blade against his arm, smirking. “Where the hell is Riddick?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Ha,” he smirked. “Last I saw you, he was protecting you from anything that even came near you. You know as well as I do that he doesn't stick far away. He  _ looooves _ you.”

“And you're high,” he snorted. “You have to be.”

“You may think that. But I’m good at what I do, kiddo.” He stepped forward, and ran the tip of the ulak up Xander's forearm. It caught him off guard, but the man really  _ did _ cut into him, slicing his skin open. “And I will torture that information out of you if I have to.”

“Torture away,” Xander lifted his chin. “I was tortured by Revas' dentist. I doubt you can do  _ any _ worse.”

“Believe that if you want,” he smirked. 

“I'm planning on it.”

A couple hours later, Xander was  _ beginning _ to question that decision. He was breathing hard, and bleeding profusely. If Riddick  _ had _ been anywhere around, the man would have shown up a long time ago, because Xander was making soft gasping whimpering sounds that hurt his very insides. Toombs really  _ was _ good at causing pain, with a very minimal amount of force. He was an arrogant, swaggering, drawling  _ artist _ . It was a wonder Antonia hadn't tried to make a statue of him. 

Of course, Xander had given up nothing. How  _ could _ he? He had no idea where his man  _ was _ . But he didn't give him anything he  _ did _ know, like where the Imam and Fry were. God. If he would do this  _ him _ , what would he do to a gorgeous brilliant girl like Fry?

“You know, this really could be  _ so _ much simpler,” Toombs drawled, tapping the inside of his own wrist with the flat of the ulak. “All you need to do is tell me where Riddick is.”

“Told you,” he rasped. “No idea where he is.”

“I'd change your opinion on that fact  _ real _ fast if I were you,” Toombs grinned, with a dark, almost twisted look. “I promise it'll go better for you if you do.”

“Not happening.” He grunted.

“See, I got a theory.” Toombs tapped his wrist with the blade again. “My theory is that  _ you _ are really only special cause of those fancy little eyes of yours. So if I take them right out of the equation...” 

Xander gaped at him, shocked. Was he really implying what he thought he was implying?

“What are you going to do, Toombs?”

“I told you. Take your eyes out of the equation.”

Xander had experienced pain in his life. He'd been impaled by a microraptor (apparently that was what they called those animals on the Hades planet), he'd been shot, he'd been stabbed, he'd been tortured, he'd even delivered a baby. But nothing compared to the screaming agony that he experienced when Toombs pierced Xander's left eye with the sharp point of the ulak blade.

Someone was screaming, and it was terribly cliché, but it took him a long few minutes before he realized it  _ was _ himself, as Toombs slashed through it, and literally cut the eye out of its socket, in pieces. 

“So... where is he now? Or do you want the right out eye out, too?”

Xander didn't answer him. Apparently he just wasn't done screaming. He hardly thought that Toombs could blame him, not really, it hurt like a son of a bitch, and while he wasn't letting out a high pitched girly wail, he was sort of letting out a deep, bellowing wail that came from a deep, sort of primal place within him, a place he hadn't even known he had. 

“Right. Well, let's let you stew on that for awhile.” Toombs leaned back, setting the blades down again, and shoved a small piece of fabric into that socket hole, which staunched the blood at least a little. 

Xander tried to bite his fingers off, and almost succeeded.

“Heh, feisty little one, aren't you. Hm. Dax!”

Xander hadn't even noticed that the man that had offered him a job, before, who was apparently a back stabber, was there, piloting the ship. Son of a bitch, Toombs really  _ was _ a smooth talker. He told a good story. But the man stepped closer, looking slightly sick. He didn't look happy with what Toombs had done. 

“Put him in cryo.”

“Fuck,  _ Toombs!”  _ Xander bucked against his cuffs, looking panicked. 

“Put him in cryo.” Toombs said again, firmly, but he was grinning slightly. “Let him stew in the silence for awhile, then I know the perfect place for him to get some  _ thinking _ in.”

  
 

\----

  
 

Xander stumbled off of the platform, and threw out his hands to catch himself. It hurt. His depth perception was beyond off, and the cuffs around his wrists kept catching him up. 

Toombs was laughing, of course, and he just wanted to cut that man to pieces. Fuck him. 

“Here, stew in this place for awhile,” Toombs grinned, tapping Xander on his shoulder, making him start. He'd thought he was further away. “Send word with the guards if you're ever feeling like you want to...  _ talk _ .”

“You cut my eye out to try and get information about my lover.” He snapped. “I don't think I want to chit chat with you terribly much.”

“I dunno, I’ve heard you have a thing for mercs that try to stab you,” he grinned, and bolted back when Xander snapped at him, nearly biting him yet again. Xander had gotten really good at almost biting him. But Toombs still hooked the massive chain to Xander's cuffs, and stepped back. “See that hole there, Xander? Down that.”

“Gladly.”

Xander had learned to embrace unusual situations. And it was one of the stupidest things he'd ever done, but he flicked his wrists up, clutching tightly to the chains attached to the cuffs themselves, and full on  _ leapt _ down the hole.

He free fell for a few long seconds, where he could hear the chain rattling along behind him, and then he was abruptly pulled up short by the cuffs and the hook catching. His shoulders screamed in pain as they fought to stay in their sockets, and something had to give – either his shoulders or the chain, he wasn't sure which.

The cuffs gave first.

Xander abruptly dropped again, and he landed hard on his feet, glad he'd bent his knees before he fell, otherwise he might have broken something. He rolled onto his back, trying to let momentum carry him through, so he wouldn't injure himself, then forced himself, unsteadily, to his feet. 

Toombs had, in a rare moment of charity, given him his goggles back. He'd shoved the left lens full of cloth, just to make sure it didn't bleed anymore. But it was  _ dark _ down here, and reluctantly, he tugged his goggles up, so he could see properly.

There were people everywhere. Oh sure, none of them had come out, but they were everywhere.

He could see them, lurking in the caves, behind the waterfalls, just trying to gauge him. Either they thought he was a threat, or they thought that he was easy prey. Whatever this place was, he hated it. It was dark – which was something he actually loved, of itself – but it was wet and cold and damp, and Xander liked hot and dry. It also smelled like despair and fear, and that was never a good thing.

Taking a deep breath, nose crinkling at the smell, he clambered up onto a metal walkway, running his hand lightly along the rail as he walked. It flaked bits of rusty metal under his palm as he walked, and he finally tugged his hand off of it, realizing he might end up getting tetanus or something if he didn't. Not that he was  _ really _ sure what tetanus was, but he remembered that his mother used to freak out about it every time he touched old rusty metal. It  _ must _ be a bad thing, right? 

There was a rattling of chain, and he looked up, sharply. 

Men were moving down the metal gangplanks, laughing and chattering among each other as they walked. Several of them were swinging chains, and a few more had large sticks in hand. Guards. Of course. 

He stepped back into the shadows, watching them, frowning. He didn't really  _ want _ to attack them, not with his current depth perception issues. He thought really that he needed to get more used to his eyes – eye, singular – before he did something crazy like just throwing himself into a fight with them.

Until that group of guards stumbled upon a prisoner who hadn't managed to hide in time.

They laid into him, beating the  _ shit _ out of the man with a sick, twisted sort of eagerness that looked like they just wanted to beat up someone, anyone, and they didn't care who and they didn't care why. It was just  _ fun _ for them.

And Xander had never taken well to people who beat up on those weaker than themselves, just for fun. He'd  _ always _ had a problem with that.

So he dashed along the metal walkways, fast as he could manage, not even caring that he didn't have a weapon of some kind. He'd improvise if he had to. 

Bursting into the group of guards like a bat out of hell, he slammed into one, just by virtue of surprising him, and threw him right off of the metal bridge itself. They were pretty high up, too, a few stories at least, so it actually  _ threw _ him several stories down, and the man screamed the whole way down.

Every one of the other guards spun to face him, and while that left the prisoner alone, and that was good, they all turned to face Xander, and  _ that _ wasn't good. God dammit, he wished he had both eyes. 

“Want a real fun time?” He asked, grinning. Bravado, all bravado. “Then come and get me, boys.”

Oh, and come and get they did. 

_En masse_. 

The leaped and roared and swung at him with chains and bars and he struggled and fought and struck back. It was frustrating when he would duck and he'd duck too early or too far away from where they were really striking, and twice he actually ducked and fell  _ into _ an actual strike. 

But one by one, he did slam them down, and he did knock them away. He was bleeding fresh from his eye socket, and there was a massive bruise purpling across the side of his face, but he had pushed and beaten and slammed the guards down enough that they darted away from him, scrambling up to the metal grate that they kept locked. They darted past it, slamming and locking the door behind them, and disappeared up into the guard barracks above. 

Xander waited until they were completely gone, then groaned softly, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose. That hadn't really gone well.

“Hello, stranger.”

Xander turned to face the man who was standing behind him, half hidden behind a waterfall. He leaned on the rail for a moment, though it creaked a little warningly, and he leaned forward again, not wanting it to break out from behind him. “Hello.”

The man shifted forward, stepping out from behind the water, smirking slightly. “So. You a convict, or an inmate?”

“Neither. Merc killer.”

The man grinned, and stepped forward, offering his hand. “Then it sounds like you'll be more of the kind of person I can deal with. I hate the mercs as much as they hate us. They call me the Guv.”

Xander considered him for a few long moments, then took his hand, and shook, firmly. “Xander.”

“So... Xander. Interesting eyes you got there.”

“Are you referring to the massive amount of blood and the empty socket, or the freaky silver one?” He arched a brow, crossing his arms. 

“Both. Ye tried  _ covering _ that eye of yours yet? A pirate eye patch or something?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I've been in cryo.”

“C'mon.” The Guv nodded at him, and lead the way down the metal gangplank. Xander followed, obediently, willing to at least see what the man wanted him to see. He was more than willing to stab him if he got sketchy. He'd learned a lesson the hard way. Stab first, ask questions later. “We can get you one together.”

“Good, thanks. You could tell me a bit about this place, while we go,” he smirked. “I'm new to slams.”

“Heh. Well, this is Crematoria, of course. Escape proof.”

“Bullshit. No place is escape proof.”

“ _ This  _ one is. Didn't you see it topside?”

“No. I told you, I was in cryo.” He shrugged. “Toombs didn't want me to see what the planet looked like, I guess. He doesn't like me.”

“He the merc that brought you in?”

“And the one that cut out my eye.” He nodded, following him into the cave he had apparently been leading him to. He sat on the upended wooden crate-turned stool that the Guv pointed him to, and watched him as he dug about for scissors and some fabric. “So I didn't see it.”

“It's split in half. One half-darkness, one half-light, and the light shifts around the planet, and half the time, it's frozen solid, the other half it's burning hot. We can't get outta here.”

“You can get out of every slam, if you know how.” He rolled his eyes, crossing his arm. Only he only rolled  _ one _ eye, because that meant he  _ tried  _ to move both eyes, and he only had one eye now. Son of a bitch, it hurt. 

“Not Crematoria, you can't.”

“Ever heard of Butcher Bay?”

The Guv frowned, and headed over to him, holding up a piece of thick black fabric that looked like it had been a seat belt or something in a previous life. He held it up to Xander's eye – or used to be eye – and nodded, then headed to cut a piece out of it. “Yeah, sure, everyone who's ever been in a slam has heard of Butcher Bay. Heard it's one of the toughest ones out there. No one's ever gotten out.”

“Dunno how long you've been in here, Guv, but two people  _ have _ gotten out. And one of them was me.” Okay, Xander was stretching the truth, but only a little bit.

“Shit. Really?” He looked up, frowning slightly. “...maybe you could get out of here.”

“Toldja. Maybe. That's a big maybe, actually. But I’m willing to give it a shot. So what are you doing there?”

“Making you an eye patch. Here. Give this a shot.” 

Xander took it, carefully, and considered it for a moment, then tried to tie it on. It was clumsy, just a black fabric patch with two long strings running off of it. He wasn't able to even get it on, and he grumbled, displeased. But he  _ did _ allow the Guv to tie it onto him, awkwardly. 

“So... do I look like a pirate?”

He laughed, grinning at him. “A little pirate like, yeah.”

Xander snorted, and leaned back into the wall. “So you're only helping me out because I whooped the guards, aren't you?”

“Something like that,” the Guv smirked slightly, sitting on another one of the wooden crate chairs. 

“I ain't gonna be your slam bitch,” he pointed at the Guv. 

He laughed. “Don't want you to be.”

“Good,” He grinned, folding his hands on his stomach, and hesitating a moment. He thought he'd heard something, but the sound was gone a moment later. “Cause technically I already am one. Don't ask. It's a confusing story.”

The Guv snorted. “Trust you. C'mon. Let's find you a cell of your very own.”  
  
[Who Stole the Tarts?](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/49342.html?#cutid1)  


 

  



	12. White Rabbit - Who Stole the Tarts?

  


**White Rabbit - Who Stole the Tarts?**

  


  


The howls of animals woke Xander.

His eye snapped open, and he rolled onto his side, then up onto his knees, standing. He'd been here just over a week, and he'd managed to avoid nearly everyone else in the slam, so far, by hiding in his cave. He couldn't really call it a cell, not really, because it wasn't one, not really. It was this deep stone cavern with iron bars across the front of the opening, but he was able to sink deeper into the shadows, where it was comfortable and safe and dark, and avoid every other living being. Food was harder to get, when you avoided others, but it was doable. You just had to be stealthy and see in the dark, two things he was now good at. 

But these sounds were different. They were primal, deep and instinctual, and he slipped out of the cell, peering upwards.

Far away, there was that metal grate that blocked the guard's living quarters off from the prison itself. Behind it stood a group of men, and about a dozen beasts that they had corralled in a narrow little run. They weren't pinkish blue in his vision like the men were, they were red hot scorching hot with deep white points of the hottest light. 

Interesting.

Someone cried out a warning, a bizarre call of “Dinner time!” and cell doors started slamming closed. 

People were running and hiding. 

Well then, this made it far more interesting.

Xander walked slowly up the metal gangplank, watching quietly as one of the guards, laughing, tugged that metal grate open, and the red-hot beasts launched out of their run, their paws slapping against the metal as they ran, barking like dogs. 

But they weren't dogs, not quite – they actually reminded him more of hyenas, and he liked that idea a _lot_. He had learned to love hyenas, since his possession. He _really_ loved hyenas, actually. But these ones were bigger, stronger, and seemed to have a sort of scaled body, not fur like he was used to. At one point, one of them moved close to one of the waterfalls, and the water, where it hit its scales, sizzled and hissed, steaming up. 

Very interesting.

Xander crept closer to where the animals were moving along the catwalks, leaning in a small crevice as he watched them, curiously. 

One of the prisoners hadn't made it to a cell in time, and the animals descended on him in a pack. He ran, naturally, but these animals were _smart_ , they ducked under railings and looped around, cutting off his last means of escape, and blocking him. He wailed for someone to help him, begged for mercy, but the animals showed none. Had they been guards, not animals, Xander would have leapt in to save him. But they were animals. They weren't attacking the man out of spite, or just for fun. They were hungry, and he was stupid enough to get in the pack's way.

He waited until they had downed the man, finally, and began feeding, eagerly, before he slipped out of his shadows, and moved closer.

One of the young ones, at the edges of the pack, heard him coming first. It lifted its head, baring its fangs, eyes sharp and piercing – and nearly identical to Xander's own silver blue eye. 

He grinned, impressed, baring his own teeth, and moved closer. 

Meeting the animal's eyes with his own, he looked back, almost trying to just communicate with him. He wished he spoke their language, that would make it better, but Xander sort of felt like he was animal _enough_ that he could get his points across, that he could make the animals understand his intention – which was not to attack them. 

He wanted to be one of them.

The animal's ears flattened for a moment, baring its fangs. Xander bared his right back, and growled.

Several other heads popped up at the sound of that growl, and other ears went flat, considering him. Xander supposed he should have felt nervous, should have been trying to get the fuck away from these animals, but he felt none of that. He wasn't sure if it was because he'd become more animalistic lately – because Riddick was right, they really were animals, more than people – or if it was because of his possession incident, back on Earth, with the hyenas. But he felt absolutely assured in the knowledge that he'd be fine. 

Shifting forward, still crouched on the balls of his feet, he growled again, meeting their eyes. 

Finally, one of the juveniles whined softly, and lowered themselves to their belly, squirming closer to him, like a begging pet. 

One of the others growled at them, but the juvenile didn't hesitate, just squirmed even closer to Xander, bumping his knee with its head, looking up at him with a nervous little whine. 

He grinned, and ran his hand along the head, fingertips bumping along the rough, hot scales, like petting a lizard would be. “Hello, little one.”

The atmosphere in the little group changed, and the animals started to move forward, curiously. 

Xander held out his hands, letting them snuffle at his palms, his arms. They circled around him, quietly, and he kept getting little bumps and nudges from their noses as they bumped him, curiously. They were a lot like cats, that way, all curious and adoring, wanting attention. And he gave that attention, wherever he could, rubbing their still hard ears and their soft light noses. They _purred_ , when their little scaly ridges were rubbed and stroked, and Xander was reminded more and more that they were like an unholy mix of cats and dogs. 

One of the animals headed over to the prisoner they'd made a meal of, and tore a sizable chunk out of the man's leg. Padding lightly over to Xander, dripping bloody chunk of meat in its jaws, it dropped the large hunk of meat on the metal catwalk in front of Xander, and nudged it closer to him with its nose.

“What, now I’m one of your younglings?” he grinned, but tore a hunk off of the piece, and bit into it, happily, chewing the fresh, bloody meat. “Mm.”

Apparently pleased that he was eating, the animals went back to tearing at the prisoner, trading pieces between each other, eating happily. Feeling more relaxed, already, feeling like he was finally one of a pack, Xander leaned back on the side of one of the animals, which was hot to the touch, warm as a furnace against his spine. Comfortable against the scaly back, Xander kept stripping pieces off of that hunk of meat they'd brought him, eating. He supposed it might not be _normal_ , to be completely comfortable with eating human flesh brought to him by a ravenous animal, but it was swiftly becoming _his_ normal, things like this.

After all, he hadn't been lying to Johns when he said that Riddick had shown him how to properly drink human blood.

There was a clang from above, and Xander jumped up himself as the animals rose, making soft whining noises, he knew without having ever seen that the guards mistreated these animals – through every non verbal cue he'd picked up in his life, he knew that they didn't want to go with them.

But a high pitched whistle, one that made him wince, sounded, and with obvious reluctance, the animals started heading back to their masters.

Except for the juvenile, the first one that had come to him, the one that had brought him food.

Ignoring the whistles and the calls, it shifted to stand beside Xander, bumping its head against his knee, purring loudly. He reached down to rub its slightly solid ears, and said softly, “It's great that you want to stay with me and all, but I really can't offer much in the way of food or anything, you should probably go with the rest of the pack.”

it whined, tail tucked between its legs, but didn't go anywhere.

“C'mon, you dumb animal!” One of the guards bellowed, slamming the bars with a metal nightstick. “Get up here!”

The animal growled, but didn't move from his side. 

“You goddamn - “

The metal gate slammed open, then shut again.

“Oh goddamn it, that's probably the stupidest thing he could do,” Xander murmured. He ran his fingers lightly across the spine ridge of the animal, trying to keep it calm, but it bared its teeth when the angry guard started to clang his way down the walkway. The animals scale colour shifted, rippling through to red, as though its scales were heating up – and they were, too, getting hotter to the touch.

The guard charged around a corner, brandishing some kind of stun stick. But he stopped dead at what he saw. 

Xander supposed it must really look like something. The one-eyed newcomer prison, the one whose other eye matched the ferally silver-blue eyes of the animals beside him, stood there with a ravenous wild animal, both with blood around their mouths. And the source of the blood was probably pretty obvious, what with the dead guy in bloody pieces on the walkway, in front of them.

He _really_ should be completely freaked out by this cannibalism thing, shouldn't he?

Oh well. Maybe later.

The guard hesitated, clearly, debating whether or not to strike or to bolt. 

The animal beside him bared his teeth, letting out a catlike warning rowl, but still the man hesitated. 

Xander grinned. “Hey, you.”

He jumped. 

“Boo.”

And the guard bolted.

Laughing softly, Xander patted the animal's head, and turned to head back to his cave. 

The animal followed like a loyal dog. 

“I suppose I should stop thinking of you as just 'animal' or 'dog' or something, huh?” He considered that, looking down at it. It cocked its head to the side, curiously as though it understood. “Stop giving me that adorable confused look, you look like Spock. I half expect you to do the eyebrows thing next, and you don't even _have_ eyebrows.”

It left out a soft huffing sound, like a snort of derision.

“Oh, that's it. You are _so_ Mister Spock.”

He padded down to the cave that was his, and headed back into the deepest of the shadows. He felt _safer_ there, deep in the darkest places, where only he could see. He flopped down on the little 'bed' he'd made for himself out of bits and pieces of sorter bits he had found, but it wasn't the best bed. He missed the furs he had in his cryo dreams. Leaning back, resting his head on one of the round stones that he'd picked to be a makeshift pillow, he sighed.

Spock flopped down heavily beside him, curling his warm body close to him, resting his scaly head heavily on Xander's thigh.

“Mmm... well, at least I won't be freezing anymore,” he murmured, stroking the scaled spine, softly. “Thanks for sticking with me, Spock.”

A sandpaper rough tongue rasped across the inside of his wrist, and he smiled, curling a little more around the hot body, pleased. He was warmer than he had been since he'd gotten here, and he could feel his muscles completely, finally, relaxing. He'd been sort of tense the entire time he'd been here, muscles all corded and strained, and now that he was finally _warm_ , he felt more like himself. 

And there was something almost a little too familiar about how he felt, but... naw. He was just imagining things because of the fast paced pitter patter of Spock's heart. 

Shifting so that he was sort of curled over Spock, his cheek resting on that hot, ridged spine, he closed his eyes, and fell gently into sleep.

Finally.

  
 

\---

  
 

Everyone in the Crematoria slam knew when they brought a new prisoner in.

As one, they'd all move onto the metal catwalks that were their streets, the veins in their prison world. Standing back, they would watch as they were lowered in, checking to see if thy were a threat or someone they could use, or, lately, even just someone they'd let Xander's hell hounds go after. They really were Xander's hell hounds, these days, as more were now living in his cave than in the cages above. The guards hated it but they were too scared of Xander's crew of the USS Enterprise to try and get them back.

Xander would always stick to the shadows, a hand on the back of Spock, who had deemed himself Xander's guardian, and watch.

But new prisoners didn't come often. Crematoria was for prisoners with a penchant for escaping, or for the truly viscous who needed to be well and truly punished for their misdeeds, whatever they were. Or for men (or the occasional very rare woman) who had managed to really piss off the merc that had hunted them down.

That was why Xander was there.

He was pretty sure that's why the newcomer was here, now, too.

There were catcalls and hollers already, when Xander stepped out of the cave, goggles on for once. He usually wore them when newcomers came in, because sometimes, maybe because they were feeling sadistic, maybe for security reasons, the guards would shine spotlights on them. One time being blinded had been more than enough for him.

Scratching Spock's head, idly, he peered up, frowning. 

“Nice boots!” Someone higher up called, closer to the newcomer. “Think I might need to make those mine!”

He squinted. They _were_ very nice boots.

Very _familiar_ boots, even.

Xander let out a cry of surprise, and barked, “ _Stay,”_ to Spock before leaping into action, dashing along the metal catwalk, his own ass-kicking boots slamming against the metal, a solid thump-thump-thump and he wasn't even remotely surprised when Spock – and Kirk, too, the brat just went anywhere there was activity because he hated to not be the centre of attention – followed him despite orders to stay. They weren't really dogs, they were giant hyena cats. They didn't follow orders. 

A few of the men shifted quickly out of their way, still scared of the hell hounds, but he just ran, whether they moved or not.

The chain lowering the newcomer stopped, and they could hear the distant shouts of the guards and the mercs as they argued over exactly how much they were going to be paying for this man, and threatening to just take their bounty business elsewhere. He was worth a lot to the slam, after all, not just to the mercs. 

But none of that mattered to Xander.

He dashed to the edge of one of the cat walks, level with the new convict, and watched, panting softly, as the man twisted the chain over and over, lifting himself up. He abruptly let go of the chain, tumbling down, until the chain snapped. He fell, but not far before he landed on his feet, knees bent to absorb the blow. 

Xander knew he could run back down, but fuck it, he wasn't doing that.

He grabbed the metal railing and threw himself over. Slamming his feet onto the walk, he lowered himself down with a series of short drops, from landing to landing, and ended up on the stone floor at the bottom of the slam pit, crouching. Spock and Kirk whined, pathetically, for a moment, then both of them started running, racing down the catwalks, just trying to get back to him. 

To _them_ , maybe.

Maybe the animals could tell another kindred spirit.

The men were moving, starting to move towards the newcomer, maybe to talk, maybe to challenge, Xander had no idea, but he just hung back and for one, glorious minute, just watched. 

He stood, straightening his spine, and dropped the remains of the chains to the stone floor. He smirked, looking around.

Naturally, the Guv stepped forward first. “Well then, newcomer. Welcome to Crematoria. So are you a convict, or a prisoner?”

“Just a tourist. Passing through.”

The Guv snorted. “What is it with all you new guys, thinking you can actually escape this place? No one gets off of this goddamn rock. You may have been tough shit before, but you're just another bounty, here.”

“Just passing through,” he said again, and stepped forward until he was chest to chest with Xander, smirking slightly. “What about you? Planning on sticking around?”

“That depends.”

“On?”

“Whether or not you're leaving. Cause if you're leaving, there's no way in seventeen hells you are leaving me behind again. Had more than enough of _that_ , thank you very much.”

Riddick just laughed.

Xander threw his arms around the other man's neck, and kissed him furiously, desperately. 

Riddick full on picked Xander up, swinging the younger man's legs around his waist, so that he was sort of hanging on him. Xander didn't mind in the slightest, naturally, and hooked his ankles together behind Riddick's lower back, holding tighter as he threw himself completely into him. He bit at the other's lips, drawing blood, and just pressed further into it, desperate and furious and angry and genuinely, passionately relieved that he was _there_.

Xander broke the kiss first – he just _really_ needed to breathe. Panting, he rested his forehead against Riddick's, occasionally chasing his lips again, for light nips, touches. He _craved_ him, now.

“Missed you, bitch,” Riddick growled, low and possessive. 

A shudder ran down his spine.

“So this, I presume,” The Guv said, almost lazily, “Would be the father?”

Riddick gave him a sharp look.

“Oh come on, you hadn't noticed?” Xander arched a brow, leaning back enough to grab one of Riddick's hands, setting it on his stomach, swollen and rounded already. “All I’m saying is that whatever escape you have planned, I hope it doesn't involve anything with split second timing on my part. Cause I _may_ not be able to pull it off. I’m trying to avoid getting stabbed, this time around.”

The world shifted sharply, and he yelped, clutching at Riddick as the man swung him around behind him, so that he hung on the other's back like a child getting a piggy-back. He clung to the other's neck, breathing rapidly. “What the hell? What's wrong?!”

He frowned, growling slightly as he considered the newcomers – the hell hounds that had clambered down the ramps. 

“What? Or for pete's sake... Spock and Kirk aren't a _threat_ , put me _down_.”

Riddick glanced at him, frowning. He had a sharp look to himself, right now, a sort of angry razor like edge, a note of concern. He was hardly surprised that Riddick was being over-protective again... god, he'd only _just_ discovered that his mate was pregnant. Again. And after what had happened last time... 

“Trust me,” he grumbled, and squirmed out of the other man's arms, crouching to hold out his hands, grinning when Kirk and Spock moved forward, lapping at his fingers, quietly. “Look at their eyes.”

He shifted closer, and set his palm against the back of Xander's neck, warm and protecting, and considered the hell hounds thoughtfully. Both of them looked up to meet his goggled eyes, as though they knew exactly what hid behind those panels of black glass. “Hm.” He said, at last. 

“Oh stop pouting, just because I discovered them first, and they like me better,” he grinned. “Relax, bitch, it's just an animal thing.”

“I think we need to show you another animal thing, bitch,” He stepped forward, and bent to scoop Xander up off the ground, throwing him up into a sort of rough bridal carry, and started walking. He grinned, though, when Xander just laughed and tossed an arm around his neck, holding on lazily. 

“I suppose you've figured out where we're going?” Xander smirked.

“That cell reeks of you,” he growled, calmly, and headed towards the darkest one in the whole slam, moving in. To his credit, he didn't even hesitate when he realized that there were nearly a dozen more animals here, the air made hot and muggy by the sheer heat of their scales. He just kept walking, and when he reached the bed at the rear of the cave (which had fortunately been made at least a little better by the addition of more bits and pieces of torn prison uniforms he'd gathered along the way) he lowered Xander to it, then settled beside him. 

“So.” Xander grinned. “Thank god we're alive sex time, now?”

He arched a single brow. 

“ _C'mon_ , Riddick...” he groaned, and pressed up to kiss him again, firmly. “It's been _way_ too long, and god I need you. I _need_ you _.”_

“You're just a slut slam bitch,” he smirked, and shifted Xander's goggles up. 

Oh shit.

Xander could see the very moment that Riddick realized what had happened to him. A flicker of shock flicked through the man's silver-blue eyes, followed by sheer, unadulterated rage. “ _What happened_?” he growled, deep and low, gravelly and absolutely furious. 

He cleared his throat. “Remember... when the Imam told you that someday, someone was going to figure out that I was your, ah... bitch, and that they'd come after me?”

Riddick snarled. 

Xander swallowed, and murmured, “Toombs was the one that figured it out.”

The other man let out a deep, bottom of the chest rumble that seemed to shake his whole body, and he started to stand. That told him exactly what he'd thought, which was it had been that same self-satisfied smug son of a bitch that had brought his mate in, too. Son of a whore. 

“No,” he caught his wrist. “Look, Toombs can't leave the planet until night shifts over anyway, we're away from the sun right now, he needs to be in the middle in order to make a run for it. I figure you're not planning on staying here long enough for him to get away... you'll take his ship, right? That'd be the most logical thing to do, so... maybe I’m wrong, but that's what I’m figuring. We have time to destroy him. We _do_ , I promise.”

Riddick didn't look happy. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to leap up and clamber up into the guard room and remove Toomb's head for what he'd done. But he settled reluctantly back to the 'bed', fairly thrumming with barely suppressed energy. 

Xander ran his palm up and down the other's arm, gently, and whispered, “Does he still have the ulaks? Because he took them... hell, it's what he used.”

He looked up sharply, jaw set firmly, but nodded. 

“Okay.” He sighed, relieved. “We can get them back, then. I kinda figured you'd kill me if I let him get away with them.”

Riddick just pressed his lips firmly to Xander's, hard enough to reopen one of the little cuts on his lips, and tugged Xander right into his lap, against his chest. Running his fingers over the long, dark braid that fell down Xander's back, he rested his other hand on his mate's rounded belly, feeling the heartbeat under the skin. “Is this mine?”

Xander looked up at him, surprised. “What kind of question is that? Of course it is.”

“How would I know? You could have found yourself another man.” 

Xander swatted the other's chest, frowning. “Hey. Don't even suggest that. I don't do the cheaty thing. Well... I sort of had a maybe girlfriend back home that I guess I’m cheating on with by being with you, but no way, she actually hated me, just liked making out with me, so... no. I don't do the cheaty thing. You're my mate, you're stuck with me. We covered this back when you accused me of getting knocked up by Johns _last_ time. Let's just accept this premise from now on – if I get pregnant, it's _your_ fault. Okay?”

Riddick smirked, and kissed him again, firmly. 

Xander sighed softly, relaxing. He had Riddick back. He was _happy_.

“That man knew that you were pregnant.”

He looked up, hesitating, and nodded. “I needed someone to take care of certain things for me. Like making sure I was safe, to make sure that the guards didn't find out... hell, he even made sure I got food, sometimes we don't have enough 'round this place. So I explained everything, and... he took care of me, I guess.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Xander blinked. “Well, because he was my friend, I guess. The Guv's a good guy.”

Riddick looked unconvinced. 

“Oh for god's sake, it's not because he's sleeping with me, or anything. It's because he's genuinely a good guy, and because I explained things to him.”

“Things.”

Xander cleared his throat, and shifted closer to Riddick, playing with the neck of his lover's tank top, quietly. “About the fact that we're not... human. I’ll... um. Well, it happened sort of like this...”

  
 

\---

  
 

Though Xander's explanation was sort of stuttered, and meandering, always breaking off onto tangents and other little metaphors and such, what he explained was essentially what happened. What happened was this:

“Guv?”

Xander leaned in the metal door of the other's cell, curiously. He was wearing a new eye patch, one he'd fashioned from a bit of leather he'd 'gotten' from one of the other prisoners. He claimed he'd traded for it, but no one could ever remember what exactly he had traded to get it. “Guv? Are you in here?”

The man was, sitting back in the rear of the cell, fashioning a blade out of a scrap of metal and a round stone that he was using to polish the edge of the blade. “Uh huh. What can I do for you, Xander?'

“I have a really awkward conversation that I need to have with _someone_ , and you're the person I trust the most here. Which is sort of awkward, since you know, we're all killers and shit round this place, but... you're a man with a code of honour, Guv, so you're the one I trust.”

He laughed lightly, and settled back in his seat, waiting.

Xander stepped into the cell, heading forward to sit on one of the wooden crate chairs, trying to get comfortable. They weren't the most ass-friendly of seats. Spock followed him into the room, moving slowly, slinking almost, shoulders shifting back and forth as he walked. He was followed by Kirk and Scotty, two of the other animals that had joined the sort of 'pack' that Xander was apparently hosting in his cell. The guards really needed to learn to _stop_ siccing the animals on the prison if they didn't want animals to start abandoning the guard and deciding to stay with Xander. Kirk was brash and noisy, leaping into fights too big for his actual skills and somehow managing to get out alive and even more bold than before, and always insisted on curling close to Spock, who seemed to barely tolerate his presence. Scotty was cantankerous and grumpy, and always snapped at everyone. He loved his little bratty pack family.

The Guv _didn't_ really like that bratty pack family. 

He shifted slightly, grumbling. The hell hounds followed Xander everywhere, now, so he'd had to get used to them, but that didn't mean he had to like it. He _did_ like, however, that the animals didn't attack the prisoners like they used to, though. Sure, Xander still let them hunt among the prisoners, he sort of figured they'd die otherwise. But he sent them after people that _really_ pissed everyone off, like the ones that tried to rape everyone they could pin. Hell, Xander was even sort of creating a sort of _order_ around the place, just in a twisted, cannibalistic sort of way.

“So.” the Guv shifted in his seat, still polishing the blade, a little, to keep his hands busy. “What's this awkward thing you need to tell me about?”

Xander took a deep breath. “Ever heard of the Necromongers?”

He frowned, looking up. “Yeah, I’ve heard the name. Fringe religion, isn't it?”

“Not so fringe, last I heard.” He shifted a little, and smiled softly when Spock rested his head on his thigh, quiet. “When I was out, you know, _there_ , not in the slam, I heard a lot about them. They were conquering planets left right and centre, one by one by one, just wiping them out. Conquering the planet, converting as many people as they could, and then pretty much blasting the planet behind them, killing everything left. Most people are dealing by sticking their fingers in their ears and singing 'la la la la la' and just trying not to think about it, you know? Fucking sucks.”

The Guv frowned, considering that. “Sounds like shit.”

“Sure is,” he agreed, nodding. 

“So what has that got to do with this conversation? You expecting a Necromonger visit?”

“Oh god, I hope not.” He gaped at the other man, stunned by the very suggestion. He hadn't expected that. “Fuck, no. That's not it. I just, like... well, the Necros have been around for generations, right, probably centuries. And they've killed a bunch of planets before, but... about twenty-nine, thirty years ago, they completely wiped out another bunch.”

The Guv pointed at him. “The Furyans! I remember that, they went all furious vengeance on them, killed the whole species.”

“Exactly,” he smirked slightly. “What do you know about them?”

“Not a heck of a lot... I think I was like... ten, maybe twelve when the massacre happened. Just remember a lot of planets being pissed, cause the Furyans were their soldiers.”

“Heh.” Xander nodded, eye focused on something over Guv's head, something that wasn't really there.

“So? What's that got to do with you?”

“Well... dunno if you knew about this or not, but... they were kinda split into two groups, you know? Primes and Alphas.”

“Ah ha!” He bolted forward, and pointed at him, grinning. “I _do_ remember that! They were the race with the pregnant men! My mam used to talk about them, kept saying that she needed to find herself a Furyan man, so she could get them to do the hard work for her!”

Xander snorted. “Exactly.”

He shook his head, amused, and grinned, “Yeah, that was a bit of an unusual group, weren't they? So is this what you needed to talk to me about? Need to drop the bombshell that you're one of the only Furyan survivors left and that you've got yourself knocked up?”

It had taken Xander a bit of research to figure this out, before he'd ended himself up in the Crematoria slam, but based on the research he'd done and based on the stories he'd been told by the preachy paranoid back in New Mecca, he was pretty damn sure he knew who he was. And it was a little freaky, but he had finally figured out the answer to Buffy's question. 

And yeah, he wasn't human.

“Actually, Guv, that's exactly what I have to tell you.”

He was Furyan.

He'd found pictures, on the infonet, scattered in a vast array of information that seemed to want to forget that the race had ever existed, but there were some scraps, hiding out among the edges of what was left, pictures of armies, snapshots of past royalty. Most of them looked human, though stronger and rougher and bloodier and angrier than most of the people he'd met, like an entire race of Slayers, but every once in awhile, there would be a shot of a man or a woman with a silver-blue flash of eyes. It wasn't a surgery, it was a _trait_ that some of them had. The duel beating of hearts, the over-protective nature of Alphas over their Primes... it all made _sense_ , once he stumbled on the information. But the species were dead, and as far as he could tell, there were only two of them left in the whole goddamn verse. 

“ _What_?!” The Guv half bolted up, gaping at him. 

He swallowed, and held up his hands, sort of helplessly. “Yeah, this is the awkward, sorry, I’ve been knocked up, and yes, I’m preggers and so I might get a little... ah... hormonal? I’ve been told I get hormonal when I’m pregnant.”

He gaped at him. “You've been told...”

Xander shrugged, playing with Spock's ears, trying to look calm and quiet, instead of nervous and kid-like again, like he actually _felt_. “So yeah. Obviously I don't want the guards to know.”

“They're gonna _see_ it though, ain't they?!”

“Um, yeah, probably, if they see me, they'll see. Shit. Didn't think of that. I really don't want them thinking they have a reason to take advantage of me, or try to do something to me or something. Fuck. This - see, _this_ is why I need your help.” Xander swallowed, and figured, why the hell not. “Help me, Guv, you're my only hope.”

He rolled his eyes, clearly not getting the quote, but thinking he was a bit of a fruitcake for saying that. 

Xander grinned, amused, and trailed his fingertips along Spock's ear, lightly. There was a light shift, and Kirk lifted his head at well, nudging at his fingers. The little attention seeking brat wanted to have some love, too. He smirked, and rubbed the animal's little soft nose, as well. It always surprised him how very soft their noses were, in comparison to their hard scaled bodies. “So... what do you think. Going to give me a hand?”

“In hiding this from the guards, or in hiding it from the father?”

Xander looked up sharply. “Why would I want to hide it from the father?”

“Well, ain't it one of the others?” He waved a hand.

“Other... other _prisoners_? Oh _hells_ no. No no no. The father is _definitely_ not another prisoner. Well, I mean, he's a _convict_ and all, but he's not _here_. I was pregnant before I got here. And fuck, I wish he were here, but...” He scratched at his scalp, quietly. “Naw, we just need to hide it from the guards. And, you know, the others, if we can.”

“Bit of a big task,” he shook his head. “Giving me a bit of a challenge, are you?”

“Making your life interesting?” Xander suggested, grinning.

“Oh, is _that_ what we call it now? It's a good thing I like you,” he snorted. “Because you're nuts.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“Tea?”

Riddick didn't look up from the shiv he was making out of a large hunk of metal he'd found god knows where, but did hold out a hand, silently, and accepted the tin cup when Xander carefully set it in his lover's hand. He sniffed at the cup, then glanced up at Xander, looking sceptical.

“Sorry, it's shit tea. But I think we've drank worse.” He grinned, and sipped at his own cup of tea. “I mean, you don't need to drink it.”

Riddick shrugged, lightly, and sipped curiously at the contents of the tin cup, frowning slightly. It wasn't the worst tea in the verse, Xander was right about that, it was a bit of a chamomile taste, over-brewed and heavier than it usually would be as a result, with little bits of tea leaves floating about the bottom of the cup. But Xander had added a little honey he'd been hoarding in a little glass jar, so it was a little better than it could have been. “Not bad,” he said, at last, leaning back finally, considering Xander as he sipped at it.

“You're giving me that look again,” he smirked, settling on the edge of a metal railing. They weren't in the cave that was 'Xander's', but rather on one of the metal catwalks. Xander _might_ have been offended, only he sort of figured that there was a good reason for it, like that maybe Riddick was trying to suss out the escape routes, and things. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Just your face itself,” he drawled, and smirked. 

“Oh ha ha, very funny, you slay me.” He rolled his eye, and played with his goggles, pushing them up a little so that they were off his eye, just resting above his brows. He kept the eye patch on underneath his goggles, at all times, just in case, and he looked a bit like a pirate. He wasn't sure if that was a good thing, or a bad thing. He knew it pissed Riddick off, though. He hated seeing his mate _damaged_ , which made Xander wonder if he had somehow lost some of his value, as a mate. He was incomplete. 

“You're staring at my patch like you think you can heal it if you can just look long enough. Actually, _can_ you do that? Cause I would _love_ that if you could, being a kid with one eye is a little freaky.”

“You're no kid.”

Xander grinned, crookedly, not sure if he should be flattered or insulted by the statement. “I try. And hell, I guess I’m over twenty one now, so I’m all adulty. Not sure exactly how old I _am_... goddammit, I shoulda stole that calender thing of Johns. I have no idea how old I am, what year it is, or how long Toombs shoved me in cryo.”

“You're older,” Riddick shrugged, running a hand down the back of Xander's calf.

“Okay, okay, good point,” He smirked, sipping at his tea, quietly. “By the way, I never got a chance to ask you what with the whole thank god you're alive and oh my god someone cut out your eye drama and then, you know, the almost ridiculous amount of oh thank god we're both alive sex that followed...” He took a deep breath. Maybe he should consider punctuating his babbles. “But um... how the _hell_ did you find me?”

“I asked Imam,” Riddick shifted his own goggles up, then took a sip of tea, considering Xander over the lip of the tin cup.

He blinked.

Riddick just arched a brow, waiting for him to sort out the words.

“Imam knew where I was?”

Shifting slightly, Riddick leaned forward to curl his fingers around Xander's upper calf, just above the top of his boots. It was a relief, just to have that light touch of contact. “I went to New Mecca to find out who had taken out a million UD bounty on me. It was Imam. Seems some fucking elemental wanted to talk to me. A prophesy about Furyans and Necromongers.”

Xander froze.

“Doesn't sound like you're too surprised.”

He cleared his throat, awkwardly, and scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, not so much, not really. Uh... her name's Aereon, isn't it?”

He nodded.

“Wow. Shit.” Xander cleared his throat again, awkwardly. “Remember how I told you a ghost woman told me I was preggers? Yeah, that was her. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised... but damn, she made Imam take out a _million_ bounty on you? No wonder Toombs wanted you!”

“He's trying to get more for you, now,” Riddick smirked. 

“Huh?” Xander blinked. “Why?”

“When Toombs took you in, you had a seventy thou bounty on you. Merc killer.” Riddick smirked, seeming more pleased by the other's stunned expression. “But he figures he should get more now. After all, Imam took out a seven hundred fifty thou bounty out on you, too.”

Xander's jaw dropped. “Imam did _what_?!”

“Elemental bitch wanted to talk to you too, big boy.”

“So?! She could _talk_ to me! She did it in cryo all the time!”

“And when were you last in cryo?”

“Well... about four months ago, I guess, since I’m about four months along, so – oh wait. Yeah, I, ah, guess it'd be pretty hard to talk to me if I ain't in cryo...”

Riddick nodded, rubbing the back of Xander's knee, lightly. His cargos had long been demolished, and he wore a pair of slam uniform pants now, along with one of their grey jackets. He still wore Riddick's sweater, stubbornly, but it was patched and held together with spare strings. He couldn't even pretend he was just wearing a deliberately shabby shirt, because it was just so falling apart it looked like it had decayed. 

Xander sighed softly. “So how is Imam doing?”

“He and his wife are fine,” Riddick smirked.

He gaped at him. “ _Wife_?!”

The other snickered, amused by Xander's flustered reaction.

“Well, I – he wasn't married when I left Helion!” Xander squawked. “Who did he marry? What's her name? Is she _pretty_?!”

“A woman, Carolyn Fry, and I’d do her.”

“Oh no you don't, you're not allowed to sleep with – _Carolyn Fry_?!”

Scotty growled and put his paws over his ears, hiding under them as Chekov bounced up, his whole ass wagging as he looked for what his Furyan pack mate yowl like that.

“ _Fry_?!” He asked again, eyes wide. “Imam and Fry got _married_?!”

“Not long after you left, yeah.” He grinned. “They got a kid, too.”

“A kid?” Xander repeated.

“Little. Called him Ali.”

“Oh.” Xander murmured, eyes distant. Something about the talk of children made him distant, just curl his hands over rounded stomach and curl into himself. “Looks just like his mother, I suppose.”

“No. Black curls, brown eyes.”

Xander glanced up, and smiled weakly, his one silver blue eye wet. “Trust you to notice her _eyes_ , Riddick.”

He smirked. 

“So they have a little boy named Ali...” He shook his head. “Half the survivors of the Hunter Gratzner got _pregnant_. Hey, ah... did you hear anything about Shazza, her baby?”

“Imam, says she died.”

Xander's head snapped up, gaping at Riddick in horror.

“Kid lived, though. Little spit fire. Imam and Fry've got her little curly headed golden eyed kid, name of Ziza, I think. Bold little bugger, wasn't even scared of me.”

He slumped back, slightly, closing his eye. “All the survivors keep not surviving... I just... I mean she was pregnant the same time as me, I’d really hoped...”

Riddick just squeezed his knee, silently. Solidarity. 

He got it too.

He sighed softly, and murmured, “Better luck this time, right?”

“Hm.” Riddick squeezed his knee, again. 

“So... um... you've heard about this Furyan thing, then. I assume you agree with me, huh? That we _are_ Furyan?”

He shrugged, sipping at his tea again. 

“I mean... the information I’ve been able to find is _vague_. I guess we're a warrior species. Because I really _do_ think we're actually Furyans, I really do. We're warriors, we fight, we wage war... I mean, they're called _Furyans_ because of their fury. They're angry people, but they're more than just angry, they're strong and powerful and protective and really deeply spiritual, which seems really weird, when you think about it, but... I mean, at least we're interesting people. And rare. _Really_ rare.”

“If you're right, there's just two of us.”

“Oi.” He patted his stomach, grinning.

“Three, then.” Riddick smirked, clearly amused. 

Xander laughed, and bent to kiss his lover, lightly, running his fingers lightly over the other's bald head, then said lightly, “I'm going to go find the Guv, I need to have a word with him, I think. A word or twelve.” He grinned, and set his own tea cup down beside Riddick. “I'm going to leave the hounds here with you. I think they need some time to get to know their new Furyan packmate, you know?”

Riddick snorted, and nodded.

Grinning, Xander headed up the catwalk, and was pleased that the hell hounds had listened to him, staying behind with Riddick. Alone for once, he headed up towards the higher levels of the slam, trying to find his friend.

He shouldn't have gone alone.

“Well well... look what we have here.”

Xander spun, a knife already out and ready to strike at the guards, but one of them had one of those stun sticks, and jammed it straight into the side of his neck, where his shoulder started. Someone had souped the thing up, at some point, so that it was stronger than any manufactured one would have been, and when it hit Xander's neck, he howled, an agonized yowl that he would have suppressed, normally, except that he _wanted_ to be heard. He wanted Riddick to hear him in pain.

The guards cackled in amusement. 

Xander tore away from them, gasping in pain, but one of the laughing guards threw a handful of dust in his face, and he sucked in a sharp breath, blind in his one eye and wishing to all _hell_ he'd thought to put his goggles back on. Someone slammed into his back, throwing himself against a wall, and he cried out, trying to protect his stomach. 

“C'mon, this is the bitch who keeps taking our hounds... let's show 'em something about what _we_ think of that,” one of the guards laughed.

One of the others cackled, and stepped closer.

Xander snapped his knife back, stabbing the guard straight through the stomach with the massive blade he'd been carrying. The man howled and yowled as he fell onto his back, clutching at his bloody stomach, and Xander snarled, threatening the others with the blade as well.

“Son of a bitch, he got Duke!” One of them yelled. “Kill 'im! He's still on the goddamn books, ain't dead if he's on the books!”

“You don't want to do that, boys,” a familiar new voice said, and they spun to face him. 

Panting, Xander half wished he could just take care of himself right now, but fuck, he was trying to check to make sure the heartbeat inside of him – not his own – was still strong and confident as Riddick leaned in the doorway, lazily, sipping at his tea, still. Xander didn't even know how he'd gotten here so quickly, how he'd managed to scramble up here so quickly and yet look so lazily casual, sipping at his tea like nothing in the world was wrong. 

“Why, what are you going to do? Kill us with your _soup_ cup?”

“It's a tea cup, actually,” Riddick said, draining the last of the tea, and set the cup upside down on a stone. “I am going to kill you with my tea cup.”

Xander slid down the wall, sitting on a wooden box, quietly, holding his stomach as he watched. He knew that the other guards wanted to pay him back for what he'd done, that they wanted to kill him. But Xander wasn't thinking about that, he was thinking about the pounding of his heart, the skittering of his nerves, the burning in his neck, the slight clenching of his muscles in his stomach. He was well and truly terrified that he was having some kind of pre-labour or something, false contractions. Fuck, it had _better_ be false labour, it would kill him if he lost this baby... 

The guards leapt towards Riddick.

He slammed the cup down on the stone, twisting it hard, breaking the rim so that it was sharp and rough, and slammed the cup straight into one of the men's chest. 

He let out a cry, that man, then toppled backwards, landing heavily on the stone floor, deader than a doornail, tea cup slammed straight into his chest, sticking out of his skin, like a strange sort of growth. The other men cried out, startled, and quickly backed up from Riddick, clearly terrified. 

“Take your dead and your dying,” he ordered, sharply, “And get the fuck out of here.”

They didn't hesitate, just scrambled to scoop up their men, darting away.

“Riddick,” Xander panted, closing his eye, resting his head against the wall. “Fuck...fuck... my heart is racing...”

“I know.” He crouched in front of him, pressing his palm to Xander's stomach, gauging the straining of the muscles, and frowned, but didn't seem alarmed. “Not labour. In pain?”

“Nothing I can't handle.” Xander said quickly.

Riddick growled lowly, sounding unimpressed with that answer. 

“It's fine, Riddick. Can we just... go to my cell? Please? I think I just need to _breathe_.”

He nodded, and bent to scoop Xander up again.

“...you know, I _can_ walk,” he pointed out, holding onto Riddick. Sure, he didn't mind being carted around like Riddick was his very own pack mule, but it did make him feel a little silly, what with the fact that the most wanted convict in the verse was carrying him like a groom carrying his bride over the threshold. 

“And?”

“...just pointing it out,” Xander snorted, amused.

  
 

\---

  
 

The first thing that happened was that the guards took their guard house topside.

Fresh – or as fresh as it ever got on Crematoria – air flooded in through the guard house above, then down through the depths of the slam itself. Men sat up straighter, women let out reluctant breaths they'd been holding, hell hounds lifted their heads, breathing in.

Riddick snatched up his shiv, and bolted to his feet.

Surprised, Xander clambered to his feet as well, padding closer to his lover, walking light-footed as he could manage in his ass-kicking boots. “Where are you going?”

“Hear that?”

Xander frowned, cocking his head to the side as he listened, intently, trying to figure out what exactly he was listening for. His eyes widened, suddenly, and he said, “Gunfire.”

Riddick nodded, and started running.

Xander followed without another word.

The sounds of fighting grew louder as they ran up the metal catwalks, the echoes of guns, and the whole slam itself seemed to shake when an explosion rocked the guardhouse above. Riddick barely waited until the gunfire ceased before he threw himself bodily against the metal grate that separated them from their presumed escape route. He took the shiv and jammed it into the lock, twisting until the lock broke like a child's toy.

Other prisoners were already following them as Riddick swung the grate open and Xander darted inside. They were giving the hell hounds – who seemed to know that their people were leaving and had all followed – a wide berth, but they were still following, clearly hoping to take part in this unprecedented escape attempt.

“Heh,” Riddick laughed lightly. 

“What?” Xander glanced over, surprised, then realized what exactly he was looking at – a woman, a merc he vaguely recalled having seen once or twice on Tangiers, during his time there. What had it been, living there, two years? Almost, yeah. She was bleeding, a lot. From scent alone, he knew she'd never survive that wound. Bleeding like a stuck pig. He crouched in front of her, curiously, considering her. 

“Help me...” she rasped, voice a bloody bubbling, a red froth gurgling from her lips. She'd punctured a lung.

“There's nothing you could do for an injury like that,” the Guv said, somewhere behind Xander, and a sharp surge of relief hit him, that he had come. “Best you might be able to do would be to ease some pain, but...”

Xander agreed.

So he took her face in his hands, gently, cupping her jaw. He smiled at her, a soothing moment, then snapped her neck. 

She went limp in his hands, and he stood, wiping the frothy blood on his pants.

“Xander, that was - “ The Guv hesitated.

“I took away her pain, Guv,” he said, simply, and glanced up at Riddick. “What now?”

God, he should have felt guilty about that, shouldn't he have? He _should_ feel torn up and horrified that he'd just snapped a stranger's neck like it was a casual, easy thing. He was pretty sure that, had Willow been here, she would have been flailing. But Buffy would have got it. Was this what it felt like, to be a Slayer? To have the power to do the right thing, but also the responsibility to do it? God, it must suck to be that one girl in all the world _made_ to be this kind of hunter. After all, look at Buffy. She'd been the kind of girl who joined cheer-leading teams and competed for May Queen, but then some unknown Powers That Be decided that she should suddenly become strong and fast and get all the powers she needed to kill monsters. Xander had _always_ been Xander: stronger and faster and angrier than his friends, more prone to fits of mindless rage and useless fury, so he'd found a way to bury his anger in nonsense and inane chatter. Mom had said, once, that she thought he might have autism, because he just couldn't seem to _adapt_ to normal society like every one else could.

He was sure that this was just because he was being forced to adapt to someone else's idea of “civilization”.

Civilization was what you made it. 

To him, it was finally being able to be who he was, and instead of getting punished for acting with his instincts,the only other member of his species praised him for it.

Riddick did, in fact, rest his hands for a brief moment on the base of Xander's spine, then moved on to check the door. 

“They blew that shit up,” Guv breathed.

Riddick frowned slightly, taking in the carnage, and Xander knew they'd found the source of that explosion earlier.

Xander drifted away from the group, trailing his fingers over the various pads and weapons on the massive table in the centre of the room, picking up one that had been on top. He actually had to tug it out of the stiffening fingers of a dead man to get it. The last thing that they'd been looking at. 

It was a long range scan from some kind of sensor array. An ion trail – he'd learned to track those himself, so naturally he recognized it – and a scout ship of some kind.

“This Toomb's ship?” He flipped the pad around to face Riddick. 

He stepped closer, frowning as he checked it, then abruptly stepped back, and tapped a map on one of the other display screens. “The docks are here, we can get to them overland.”

“Overland, are you insane?” The Guv demanded, as Xander snapped, “Riddick? What is this?”

“Anyone who doesn't think they can't keep up, don't come.” Riddick said sternly, ignoring them both. He scooped something up from the desk – his ulaks, thank god, they'd left them here – and tucked them into the holster that Toombs had apparently had made for them before swinging them on. “Xander.”

“Don't even think about it, I’m coming,” he said, fiercely. “And what is this ship, Riddick?”

He glanced at him.

“Riddick.” Xander said again.

The other man picked up a chair, and threw it straight through one of the windows. It made them all jump, startled at how easily it had been broken, but it had already been riddled with dozens of bullet holes. Structural integrity was definitely a thing of the past.

Riddick kicked one last piece of the glass in and clambered out through the hole.

Xander, swearing to himself, pushed an upstart prisoner out of the way, and clambered up out after Riddick. His lover caught his arm, and he glanced up at him, startled, as he dragged him up and out of the window. 

And then Riddick finally explained.

“Necros.”

And Xander immediately wished he hadn't.

“Are they coming here to convert?” He asked, already pretty sure there was no way that was the answer. “Or did you manage to piss off a race that wants to destroy ours?”

Riddick actually _grinned_ , the son of a bitch, and of course that gave him his answer.

“You're a complete bastard,” he grumbled, but still handed his mate the rifle he'd picked up from the table. “There are only four shots. Don't waste them.”

“Thanks, bitch,” he smirked.

Xander rolled his eyes, and tightened his belt, checking his knives and the light heartbeat within him for a brief moment before starting a little piece down the stone hillock the slam was built into, trying to see where they were going.

He'd never seen Crematoria before, he'd been in cryo when they'd arrived on the planet.

He gaped up at the world. It was a planet of stone and fire, massive spires and ripples of stone, made of flash-frozen lava, twisted and full of air bubbles, waves of lava caught mid-crash, like pieces of stilled art. It was as though the world had been made to look like someone's idea of an ocean. The sun burned hot behind the distant mountains, slowly starting to stain the rest of the sky crimson, and Xander was reminded, eerily, of the exact reverse of Hades. There, the rising darkness had been heralding their death. Here, the light meant a swift and final end.

He'd been woefully unprepared for both.

“Now hold it right there.”

They all spun to face the new voice, and Xander took a half step back when he recognized Toombs. The son of a bitch had lived through that fire fight? He had a massive rifle resting on his hip, and he had that same cocky, crooked grin he always had.

“Hey now... until I get paid – what yer _worth_ – two of you here are still my bounties. So anywhere you go, I go.”

Riddick looked far too calm for this proclamation. Xander was ready to rip the man's head off. But Riddick was looking at something behind Toombs, not at the merc himself, and it took Xander another few moments before he spotted it too.

Toombs never saw it coming. 

Spock threw himself bodily through the window, massive clawed paws slamming against Toomb's back, throwing him down to the sharp, jagged stone. The merc howled and spun, already firing.

“No!” He howled, running forward.

Riddick's arm thrown across his chest only _just_ stopped him from running to the defence of his hell hound.

Spock “won”.

It was the merc who slumped first, his bloody hand finally releasing the rifle, which tumbled away. Spock had ripped huge chunks out of the man, who lay all _over_ the plain. But Spock hadn't really fared much better – he'd been hit at least a half dozen times by Toomb's shots, and he fell, heavily, beside the man.

Riddick didn't stop Xander's desperate rush forwards this time.

Xander would never admit it, if asked later, but his eye was more than wet, it was running over, when he dropped to his knees beside Spock. Cradling the animal's head, carefully, he stroked the ridged ears, gently, and murmured, “You shouldn't have done that, you are the most illogical Vulcan I’ve ever met... Riddick could have killed Toombs without even breaking a sweat... oh Spock...”

Riddick touched his shoulder, lightly.

He sniffled and swiped at his eye with the back of his hand, quickly. Standing, he glanced where Riddick was looking, silently, and nodded. The sun was coming up too quickly. But he tugged off his slam jacket, then tore off the remains of Riddick's sweater he still clung to. Balling it up, he bent to slide it under Spock's head, carefully, like a pillow.

“Let's get the _hell_ out of here.” He said, voice cracking.

Riddick nodded, then leaned back and called to the others. “Stick close together. You fall behind, we leave you. And keep ahead of the sun.”

They ran.

It was hard work, running through narrow and twisting little canyons formed by the cooled lava, canyons that hadn't been there yesterday and wouldn't be there tomorrow. Caught between the frigid desolation of night and the fiery oblivion of day, they dashed through the transient landscape, in a limbo of time. Too far to the right or the left and they would be killed.

The sun was moving slowly closer, and the ground was starting to heat. Ash was falling through the air like feather light snow. It clung to their hair, their eyelashes, and when they tried to wipe it off, it smeared black streaks on their skin.

Gunshots erupted on the ground and cliffs around them, and Xander ducked, sharply. “Son of a bitch!”

Riddick pushed Xander ahead of him, to tuck him in a nook that was actually hot to the touch, then swung his rifle down off his shoulder, firing at the gun turret the shots had come from. Xander hadn't even _seen_ that thing, it blended into the ashen landscape perfectly. 

One of the other prisoners, a lanky young man Xander thought was named Nell let out a cry of pain, and fell to the ground.

“Goddammit, Riddick!” he pointed at the horizon. “We need to _move_!”

The Guv barrelled past the gun turret, not even hesitating. He managed to avoid getting shot by _some_ miracle, and he darted forward, snagging Xander's arm.

“Guv, what - ?!”

“You know your man wants you outta here. And I promised you when this whole bullshit started that I was gonna make sure I would take care of you. So _move_ ,” he tugged Xander out of the hot little stone nook he'd been shoved into, and yanked him along through the little canyon again.

Xander followed, obediently.

He really needed to stop following people like a lost puppy dog, just because he trusted them.

He'd trusted too many of the wrong people in the past.

The gunfire still echoed behind them, as they ran, until an explosion rocked the ground, and Xander swore, ducking a cascade of dislodged rocks. They were nearing a cliff that threatened to stall their progress, when Riddick abruptly fell from the air above them, dropping into place in front of Xander, but though Guv yelped in surprise, Xander didn't even react, just kept moving as quickly as he could, falling neatly into step behind his lover like it was second nature. Maybe it was first nature, actually. Follow the Furyan instincts, whatever that meant, and all.

“We're stuck!” The Guv howled, when they reached the cliff. “Where do we go now?”

“Up.” Riddick said, simply.

“Son of a whore monger,” Xander muttered, closing his eye for a moment, grateful for the fact that his goggles obscured his expression for a large part. “Have I ever mentioned how much I _hate_ climbing shit?”

“Yes,” Riddick said calmly, and started to climb.

Xander _really_ hated climbing. But he climbed, hand over hand, keeping a close eye on where Riddick grabbed, catching them after the other did.

He'd long ago noticed that where others touched left light traces of heat, fast fading hand prints. But the sun was rising, rapidly now, and the stone was hotter than the hand prints themselves. Even with the goggles, it was starting to hurt his eyes to just _see_ , and Xander began to wish that they'd just _get_ there, already. Escaping Butcher Bay hadn't been _this_ hard, and they were both Triple Max Slams.

Physical pain swept over Xander when the sun finally crested over the ridge it had been hidden behind, golden, fiery sun sweeping over him. It burned every inch of exposed skin, and even this California boy was going to get the sunburn to end all sunburns if he got any more exposure. He had to close his eye against the onslaught, and ducked into a shaded alcove as fast as he could, chest heaving as he hid in the scant shadow. “Not like this!” He howled, surprised at how rough his voice sounded. It was like he'd been around fire, and his throat had been scorched. “Dammit, Riddick, I can't die like this! Not _now_!”

There was no response.

Xander thumped his head back against the stone, hissing. No. No, goddamn it, this was _not_ how he was going to die.

The sun was burning, so the natural solution was cooling down. He had no SPF 8 million sunscreen, sadly, but he _did_ have a canteen.

Uncapping it, he poured the contents over himself, making sure to soak his head, his chest, especially his stomach. Then he scrambled out of the shadow, and started pulling himself up again, hand over hand.

The water steamed off of him, and the moment his hands hit each new handhold, the skin sizzled and burned. 

He thought of just letting go, once.

But then there was a sharp kick against his kidney, inside, and that sharp reaction spurred him on to moving faster, grabbing the next hand hold, and the next, moving quickly. 

An equally steaming hand caught his forearm, and Riddick hauled Xander up into a shadow.

Slumping against still ice cold rock, pressing his burning, aching palms against the shadow cooled stone. He knew he didn't have long to be still for, but even a few seconds of cool was better.

But the heat was rising in the stones he was touching, and Xander stood, clearing his scorched throat. “This all of us?”

Him, Riddick, Guv, and a guy he thought was called Andre.

Nearly a dozen of them had left the slam.

“This is it,” the Guv nodded.

“ _Move_ ,”Riddick rumbled, pushing Xander ahead of him this time. He was pretty sure the other man just didn't want to have to come back for him, again.

Xander willingly ran.

The moment they crested over the ridge, where the docking bay waited, doors already open, it was clear that something was wrong. There was a ship sitting outside, a malevolent looking black thing, if you could even say that a ship _could_ look malevolent. There were people in black armour milling around on the tarmac, and Xander frowned, feeling like he _should_ recognize them.

“What's this, then?” the Guv frowned.

“Necros,” Riddick answered, already tugging the ulaks out.

The hair on the back of Xander's neck, that which hadn't been already burned off, stood on end. He drew his largest, sharpest knife, and followed his lover into a battle the Necros didn't know was coming.

Riddick moved like a force of nature unleashed. His blades flashed like living things, and for ever step he took, they buried themselves in another man's flesh.

Xander moved at his back, dealing final blows to any that tried to stand. These Necros were hard to kill. Strikes would knock them down, but just like Riddick would have, they stood. Fortunately, they were slowed by the extent of the injuries Riddick was dealing, enough that Xander had enough time to ensure they'd never stand back up by, whenever possible, literally removing their heads.

He heard when someone killed the Guv, the howl of the other man, then the sickening sound of a spine breaking.

Xander's head snapped up, and his eye met the eyes of the killer. Even with the goggles on, the man seemed to be able to sense the connection, and he froze in place for a moment. Then the man, tall, muscular, with armour that looked more detailed than the others, and with a long faux hawk, actually quirked an eyebrow, and nodded his head towards Xander, like some twisted kind of respect. _Then_ he dropped the Guv's body.

He howled, and leapt forward.

He'd show this bastard the true meaning of _respect_.

One of the Necro soldiers took advantage of his distraction and managed to hit him with those serrated knives of theirs. They'd plunged it deep in his thigh, and he sank to one knee, breath catching as he struggled to keep going.

A howl distracted him from the pain. He didn't just hear it, he _felt_ it, deep in the marrows of his bones, a resounding echoing that made his heart beat faster, his blood pump harder. 

And then Riddick's howl was cut short, and a tidal wave of harsh blue energy swept over the army. 

Xander fell, dead.

  
 

\---

  
 

“Wake up.”

Xander sighed, softly, reluctant. He was very comfortable right where he was, thank you very much, and he didn't really _want_ to wake up. Do you know how long it had been since his last good night's sleep?

Either the speaker didn't know or didn't care, because in a commanding voice, that carried just enough of that 'or else' tone, she said again: “Wake. Up.”

Xander's eye snapped right open. 

A woman stood in his cave – and yes, it _was_ his cave, the one he went into in cryo, with the bloody paintings and the animal fur bed – hands on her hips. She wore leather and feathers, beads and small flowers woven into her long hair, and she wore a metal necklace, like dozens of small rings stuck together, as though it meant to stretch her neck. She had golden, almost whiskey amber coloured eyes, wide lips curling into a soft smile. Everything about her looked _familiar_ , but he couldn't think of why. 

Until abruptly it came to him.

“...you're my mother.”

The woman beamed, and stepped forward, crouching at the edge of his fur bed, resting her hand lightly on his knee. It was a strange thing, to be _touched_ by his _mother,_ his _dead_ mother. “My Alexander.”

He gaped at her. “You – who the hell – how the hell – how in the _verse..._ how... you're _dead_!”

“Oh, Alexander, death is not the end for a Furyan.”

He blinked at her, confused. The world seemed to be whirling about him, like it had started turning too fast, around and around him. He was feeling sort of dizzy. How was it even possible...

“I – I don't understand.”

“Just because I am dead does not mean that I am _gone_ , Alexander. The Furyans are a spiritual people, we go beyond death into a sort of afterlife, in the Underverse.”

“I thought that was the Necromonger's thing,” he said, slowly. 

The woman smiled, and straightened enough to sit on the furs beside him. She reached over to curl her fingers around his jaw, holding his face, gently. She was a strong woman, and Xander could already tell that she was brash and bold normally, but she seemed almost sweet, in that moment. Like a mother, holding her child. Holy fuck, that was exactly what she _was_ doing. “I am Shirah,” she said, quietly, running the pad of her thumb lightly along his cheekbone. “And I am your mother. I was Lavelle before you.”

“Oh.” He breathed. “...what happened?”

She stroked his cheekbones again, quietly, smiling at him. “Thirty years ago, the Necromongers arrived on Furya, and began massacring our people. Hiding in the palaces saved us for a short time, but naturally, if they were going to kill every one of our children, the then unborn Lavelle was going to be a target as well. So my brother helped smuggle you and I out of the palaces, into a ship. I went into cryo, and set the autopilot to take us to an old colony that the Furyans had once lived on.” She took a deep breath. “Something happened, on the way. I do not know exactly what it was, but... the ship crashed.”

“On Earth,” Xander nodded. “In Sunnydale.”

“Perhaps. I didn't know.” She frowned slightly, her hands finally dropping off his jaws, resting in her lap as she considered him thoughtfully. “I found myself in a place where I didn't understand what they were saying, and I didn't speak the language.”

“English?” He blinked at her, confused. “We're speaking it now.”

“That strange tongue? Nonsense.”

Xander blinked at her, confused, then hesitated, and spoke again. “But I only speak English...”

But he _wasn't_ speaking English. He was speaking a different language, one that he shouldn't speak, because he'd never actually learned any languages other than English. But he _did_ recognize what he was speaking, he knew exactly what it was, it was that language he used to speak with Willow, when he wanted no one to understand what he was saying. It was the one he used to write his letters back home, it was the language he'd used to use whenever he wanted to piss off his teachers in elementary school – which was often. “...we're not speaking English.”

Shirah shook her head. “Furyan.”

“Oh.” He swallowed, starting to feel even more dizzy. If he kept this up, he was just going to fall right over.

She seemed to realize that, and actually gathered her arms around him, pulling him closer, so that he leaned on his mother – holy crap, this was his mother – and his head was resting on her collarbone. Stroking his long, chestnut hair, gently, she murmured, “I'm sorry that this has happened, my son. Had I been there, your life would have been much different, you would have been a Lavelle your whole life, not just recently. You might have met a very different alpha, perhaps, but I don't know, perhaps you're happy with your alpha.”

“With Riddick?” He glanced up at her, surprised. “You mean am I happy with Riddick?”

Shirah nodded, trailing her fingers lightly against the back of his neck. “I am your mother, Alexander. It's my right to ask these questions.”

He snorted. “Hm.”

“Well?” 

Xander shifted a little, and cleared his throat. “Yeah, he makes me happy, I guess.”

She looked unimpressed by his indecision.

He squirmed. “Okay. Look. He makes me _happy_. Riddick does make me happy, and I want to be with him whenever I can, so we can spend time together and just... _be_ together. He makes me happy. But he's... I dunno... he's nothing like me, I guess.”

“Is that a bad thing?” She asked, lightly. 

“Oh, no. No, it's not a bad thing. It's a really good thing, I guess. I would never want to be with a guy who was exactly like me, ugh. That would be boring.”

Shirah laughed softly, still stroking his hair. He liked this, actually. 

“So... I get that you're dead but not exactly dead, I mean, there's that whole thing, I get that. But you've never come to talk to me before, so I gotta kinda assume that there's something about right _now_ that makes you come now, because it can't _just_ be that I’m pregnant, because I’ve been pregnant before, and it's not just because I almost died, because I’ve almost died about eight million times before...”

She nodded, and leaned back slightly, her smile fading, looking far more serious. “You understand that the Necromongers mean to kill all of our kind?”

He nodded, sitting up properly himself, so that he could face her. He wished that he had two eyes, so that he could face his mother properly, but of course he was missing an eye, and it meant that he just _couldn't_ quite meet her eye to eye. Eyes to eye, sort of. 

Shirah sighed softly, and straightened her spine. “They plan to kill all Furyans because of a prophesy. The leader of the Necromongers, the Lord Marshall, was told that the one to destroy him, to kill him, to end his reign, would be a Furyan male. So they mean to kill us all, simply to eliminate that chance.”

Xander gaped at his dead mother. “Do the rest of the Necromongers know that? That they massacred our race because the Lord Marshall is scared of us?”

“They do what they're told, Xander,” She said quietly, reaching up to touch his cheek. “They don't terribly care why they're doing it. They just do it because they have been told to, and that's what they do.”

“That,” Xander said firmly, “Is stupid.”

She laughed softly, grinning at Xander. “That's true... you are very much my son, Alexander. I agree, the Necromongers have lost who they once were, have lost their place in their rich history and deep religious faith. They have become almost automatons in their blind obedience to the words of their Lord Marshall, and have completely lost their own minds. I fear they don't even _have_ their own minds, now. That the men and women they once were are lost to the Underverse itself, before their times. But they mean to kill you and your alpha, Riddick, and if they kill you, my son, our race is dead.”

“So we just have to avoid being killed.”

“ _No_.” She said, with a ferocity that surprised him. Baring her teeth, she slammed her fist into her open palm. “They Necromongers _killed_ our kind! They massacred their own kinsmen, because of a prophesy!”

“So?” Xander cleared his throat. “A lot of races have done _that_ before.”

“They must be made to pay for their crimes.” She said, fiercely. “We are a race of anger, Alexander, do you not feel it _burning_ inside of you?”

“Well... yeah, I _am_ angry about it. It pisses me off that I don't have brothers and sisters and cousins and for god's sake, that I wasn't even raised by my own mother and father! I mean, god, I ended up with Riddick because he's the only one left!”

“Bullshit.”

He blinked at her. 

“You did _not_ end up with that man because you were both just _there_ , you ended up with your mate because the verse itself arranged that. This is what the verse _does._ But to say that you are angry only because you had no family is short sighted.” She reached up to place the flat of her palm against his chest, and Xander sucked in a sharp breath, surprised. It actually _hurt_ where she touched him, and a blue light seemed to be creeping out from under her hand. He didn't know how, or what she was doing, but he could feel the anger she had mentioned bubbling up inside of his guts like a living, liquid thing, clawing its furious, desperate way up his throat. “Our _race_ was annihilated, Alexander. Your mate and you are all that remain. I grant to you the Rage of the Furyans, Xander. Take it, and avenge our deaths.”

The pain in his chest burned, hard and fast and sharp, and blue light flooded over them both, like an atom bomb of light.  
  
[Alice's Evidence](http://sparrowshellcat.dreamwidth.org/49457.html?#cutid1)  


 


	13. White Rabbit - Alice's Evidence

  


**White Rabbit - Alice's Evidence**

  


Riddick awoke in the shadows, bolting up to his feet like an animal unleashed, furious and blood rolling with anger. Perhaps it was the anger of the entire race that made him ready to leap into the sky and tear the world apart. 

But as he stood there, in the entrance of the small slam hanger bay, his heart leapt when he caught a familiar scent – getting further away. 

Xander's scent was on the Necromonger ship moving further away.

And there was no heartbeat to accompany it.

“Xander.” He said, a shocked breath. He never said the boy's name. But as the Necromongers carried away the body of the only other Furyan, the bearer of his children, it seemed like he had to say it. Like it was necessary to say. 

“The Lord Marshall bid me deliver a message to you.”

Riddick spun. He hadn't even noticed the man standing there, tall, whip thin, his blond hair cut close to the scalp. He was dressed in a lighter version of the armour the other Necromongers wore, like a more ceremonial version, perhaps. But he was removing the pieces, one by one, setting them item by item on the edge of an instrument panel. There was a calm, almost serene expression on his face, as he worked. “Should Lord Vaako fail to kill you, that is.” He added. “You are to stay away from Helion and he will allow you to live.”

Snatching up one of the dead Necromonger's blades, he stormed forward to grab the man, his fingers curling tightly around the man's throat, digging into the flesh as he bared his teeth at him, wanting to tear him apart.

“Wait,” the Purifier gasped, not fighting him off, just holding up his hands.

Riddick snarled, intent on crushing the life out of the other man.

“ _Wait_ ,” he said again, and reached up to jerk the front of the black leather jacket he wore open, revealing a blue glowing hand-print on his pectoral, right above his heart.

He dropped him like he'd burned him.

The Purifier stepped back, clearing his throat, and lifted his jaw. “We all started as something else.”

“You're Furyan,” Riddick rumbled, voice deep in his chest. 

“I was,” He agreed, setting aside the last of his jewels and trinkets, and tugged the knife out of his belt, dropping it silently to the floor. It clattered and rang as it fell, skittering across the floor. “I have done terrible things in the name of a religion that was never mine. Now... the Necromonger in me tells you to run, to escape as far away from Helion as you can and never look back. The Furyan in me... hopes you don't listen to me.”

The Purifier smirked, and started moving towards the edge of the garage, as though he was going to walk out into the sunlight.

Riddick reached out to catch his arm, and it was his turn to say, “Wait.”

He hesitated, surprised. 

“There are few enough of us.” He said, firmly. “Without you walking into that sun.”

The Purifier stopped, and said, quietly, “Do you understand the situation we are in, Riddick? There are none of us left. You are the last hope we have, for possibly killing the Lord Marshall, but if you fail, when you die, so dies our race.”

“Bullshit.” He growled. “My mate is pregnant.”

His head snapped back to face him again, startled, and the man's pale blue eyes widened, nostrils flaring slightly. He had buried his instincts for god knows how long, trapped within the shell of a Necromonger half-life, but those instincts were still _there_. “By the gods... you have a prime. A _pregnant_ prime.”

He smirked faintly. 

“And it actually _is_ a prime, too, not just some woman from some other race...” The Purifier gaped at him. “You found a Furyan prime. By the gods, a Furyan Prime... a Furyan Alpha... you _can't_ fail in this, Riddick. You have the last chance of recreating our race.”

He didn't really feel it worth pointing out that Xander's heart hadn't been beating. He was rather trying not to think about that himself. “You can play a part in this.”

“How can I do that?” The man scoffed. “You're mated to a Prime. Where am I to find another Alpha?”

Riddick frowned. He'd been trying to figure this whole thing out, this whole Furyan situation. That Shirah woman had told him some details, in his dreams, but that wasn't enough. Xander had figured out some things he'd told him about in the slam, but this man standing here was one of the old ones, one of the Furyans from before the massacre. He knew things that all of the research in the verse would never find them, and while he didn't really care about his 'heritage' and where he came from, he had learned that Xander _would_. “Primes and Alphas. Explain.”

The Purifier hesitated, stunned. It was like a question he'd never thought to ask. “Alphas... are the physical force. The military leaders, the ones that go out and wage war, I guess. Those that father the children. The Primes...”

“Are weaker?” He asked, arching a brow.

“ _No_.” He said fiercely. “No Furyan is weak.”

He crossed his arms, considering him, intrigued. After all, of the two of them, Riddick would have definitely thought that Xander was the weaker of them. 

“Furyans are _not_ weak.” The Purifier said again, fiercely. “We are a race meant for war, for power, for domination. We ruled the verse with a fist of iron, and the verse bowed to us. Primes were the spiritual leaders, the political leaders. The Alphas ruled the physical sphere, the Primes ruled the spiritual and religious spheres. They are not weak. They're just... strong, in different ways.”

“And the Primes bear the children.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “And the amount of effort involved in that, alone...” The Purifier whistled, lowly.

“You've done it, then.” Riddick glanced at him, a level, steady gaze.

The Purifier hesitated, and nodded once. “In a different life.”

“What happened to that child? The mate that fathered them?” He frowned, leaning back on the wing of Toomb's ship, which fortunately sat where the man had left it, and he'd be able to fly out of here with it, soon. Soon as the sun set. He just had the hope that, thinking he was dead, the Necros would take a long time getting back to Helion, where he could push the merc's ship until it blew up, he didn't care. 

The blond man considered him for a moment. “Converted.”

“Converted.” He repeated.

He smiled faintly. “You expected, perhaps, that my family was massacred when the Necromonger forces arrived on Furya thirty years ago and killed all that was left of our kin? You probably know very little of our history... Furyans have always been the warriors of the verse, Riddick. They waged the wars that other races didn't want to fight, because that was what they _did_. They fought. And many races have tried – and failed – to destroy the Furyans before. But the Necromongers have come the closest to succeeding. Twice.”

He glanced back at him, silver-blue eyes snapping to the blond man.

“Granted, you know about the recent massacre. Everyone over the age of thirty remembers it happening. Two hundred years ago, the Necromonger race was born out of fire and hatred. Two brothers hated each other, and one reacted by twisting the religious beliefs of both into a justification for conquering his brother. He used the Underverse as his motives, and was the first Lord Marshall of the Necromongers. The second Lord Marshall was the one who moved conversion beyond volunteers to a forcible conversion. He forcibly converted over half the Furyan race.”

Riddick shifted. “I thought we were the warriors.”

“We were.” He said, quietly. “But we were met with an army of strength equal to ours. The Necromonger army. They – they were equal to the Furyans in every way, except stronger, because they didn't feel pain the same way that we did. We were strong, but they were strong and weren't felled by their injuries. They were spurred on by the need to reach their 'due time'.”

“Why were they equally strong?” He frowned.

“Because they were a race of volunteers.” The Purifier said, lifting his chin. “Volunteered Furyans.”

“We were betrayed from within by our own people.” He growled, the hand print on his chest flaring again as his own anger – and the anger of billions of lives, snuffed out by their own kin – boiled up in his throat. He wanted to rip them apart. To track down the Necromongers themselves, all of them, and tear them all apart. 

“Yes.” The Purifier said, lightly, and glanced away from him, out into the fire of the planet around them, the sun flaring and burning away at what little was left. “We were. I was Lavelle. And so I was made an example of. Converted, and made into the _Purifier._ I was a pawn made to lead my own people, my own family, my own race into destruction.”

“Lavelle?”

“Spiritual leader of the people.” He said, struggling to stay calm. The rage their race was known for was clawing at his throat, as well. “Lavelles are members of the royal family, heirs to the throne, but they don't just... rule. They lead the people. That's why they converted me. To have the Lavelle lead their people into the Underverse... it was a dream come true, for the Necromongers.” He shook his head, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment. “I was Lavelle once. Our race has no leaders now.”

He smirked, and stood, heading towards the hatch of Toomb's ship, opening it, considering the inside. Yes, he could work with this.

“You're going somewhere?” The Purifier asked.

He glanced back at him, and said, “Going to go get my mate back from the Necros. I don't imagine you've ever heard of him, but you will. Lavelle Alexander.”

He bolted after him, shocked. “ _Lavelle_?!”

“Our race ain't dead yet.” Riddick smirked, grimly, and headed into the ship. Well, they weren't dead _now_ , anyway. But if he got to Helion Prime and his mate _was_ dead... the wrath of the Furyans might result in more devastation than even Shirah might have anticipated.

  
 

\---

  
 

Xander's eye snapped open, and he started up, trying to figure out what was bothering him. 

Someone was watching him.

He had to struggle to see for a few long moments, actually. His brain seemed to think that he'd been blinded by blue light, but he didn't actually see any blue light, and was fairly sure he hadn't actually really seen any, either. There was a dull buzzing in his chest, still, but once he got his eyes straightened out, he realized that the person that was watching him was the man he'd seen before, the man that had killed Guv.

The man had shed the heavy black armour that he'd been wearing, and was dressed only in a tight black catsuit sort of thing, made in a type of fabric that looked like it was made of snake skin. He'd never seen anything exactly like that, except on a few skanky girls back in California. He couldn't exactly say that it looked skanky on him. 

Actually, he had to admit that there was something powerful about this man, where he sat across the room, watching him calmly. He had a bit of the action under his skin, like Riddick always did. Like he was ready to leap up and attack.

“What, having fun watching me?” He asked, voice still rough and scorched. 

The man didn't seem to react. His expression was stern and serious, and neither smiled nor glared. He simply continued to watch him, until he said, finally, “You are Furyan.”

He arched a brow. Observant son of a bitch. But he didn't exactly want to _admit_ to being a Furyan, not to a Necromonger. He kind of got the impression that he wouldn't live very long if he did that. This man was intense and harsh and he wondered if it would be a point of honour for a Necromonger to kill one of the last remaining Furyans or not. It might be. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

The man scoffed, and leaned forward. 

Xander leaned back, instinctively, wanting to keep out of his reach, but he was sitting with his back against the wall, and there weren't many places for him to go. He couldn't get far enough out of this man's way, and the dark haired man hooked his fingers in the collar of Xander's tank top, shifting it aside to reveal his chest – and the blue glowing hand print over his heart. “You are Furyan.”

Holy crap, mother, what did you do to me?

“Well, I didn't have that _yesterday_ , so I don't know how that's supposed to mean that I’m Furyan.”

The man arched a brow, and leaned back. “You are too young to have lived through the destruction of Furya. A child born afterwards, perhaps?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.” Xander pushed himself to his feet, wishing that the threadbare slam jacket he wore was loose, large, or heavy enough to cover his stomach. It was obvious that he was pregnant, which probably told everyone who knew anything that he was Furyan. And this guy seemed to know it. Shit. Still, he tried to act casual, cracking his shoulders, his neck, his jaw. Whatever the hell his mother had done to him, to transfer this 'rage of the Furyans' thing to him, it still made his whole body ache. “Out of curiosity, though, why am I not dead?”

The man frowned, as though trying to find an answer to that. 

“I mean, if you _really_ think I’m a Furyan, which I don't know why you think that, but if you really think that I am, why in the whole damn verse am I alive? Because that doesn't seem like a very good decision on your part.”

“You're pregnant.”

Xander glanced up, surprised by that answer. “Last I checked.”

The man shifted in his seat, crossing his arms. “That is why you are alive.”

“I thought you Necromongers were all about killing Furyans.” Xander pressed his palms into his lower back, arching his back to crack it again. Yeah, it made it even more obvious that he was pregnant, but his back hurt. “So if I was a Furyan, it would make more sense to kill me and my child _before_ its born, wouldn't it? Not that I’m suggesting you do that, believe me. I _really_ wouldn't like that. But it seems a little weird, for a Necro to save the life of a pregnant Furyan.”

“Who are you?”

Xander glanced at the man, blinking. One of the thin braids his faux hawk was tied into was falling forward over his shoulder, and it looked out of place. He had the irrational desire to put it back into place. _Okay, Xan-man_ , he thought. _Get your head out of the weird space and back to reality_. “They call me Xander.”

“They?” The man repeated.

“My mom calls me Xander,” he snorted. “And my friends, the few that I have, they call me Xander. Everyone else calls me Alexander. Don't call me Alexander. I hate being called Alexander. So what do I call _you_ , then?”

He shifted slightly, expressionless as he said, “Vaako.”

“Vaako.” Xander repeated, scratching the back of his neck, thoughtfully. “You killed my friend.”

His brows furrowed, surprise flickering through his dark eyes. Xander was rather pleased that he was starting to recognize emotions in the midst of the other man's serious, stern expressions. Something about his serious, remarkably calm expressions reminded him of Riddick. _Oh god_ , he thought, _Let's try not to make any connection between this bastard and Riddick, okay, Riddick is... ten kinds of crazy, and all kinds of scary, but at least he's not... okay, maybe a Necro asshole is just as bad. But it's_ different _._ “Who, I have killed many men.”

“He was called the Guv,” he said, glancing at him. “You broke his spine.”

“Ah.” He nodded, calmly. “Yes, I did.”

“ _Well_?” Xander demanded, expecting an apology, if nothing else. _Something_ to make up for what he'd done. 

“Your friend tried to kill me. It was his due time.” He said calmly, and stood up, moving towards Xander. Xander, naturally, backed up. “Such is the way of things.”

“Yeah, well, it still pissed me off.” He snapped, backing up until his back hit a wall. _Dammit_.

“You asked why I would keep a pregnant Furyan alive.” Vaako said, jaw set. 

Xander swallowed, and lifted his jaw. He refused to show any fear. Riddick never would have let him live it down, if he showed any hint of weakness. He wasn't a teenaged kid from California anymore. He was a man. A slam escapee. Fuck, a Furyan. He wasn't going to back down just because tall dark and scowl-y was glowering at him. 

Vaako tugged the high, Mandarin collar of his under armour open, jerking it open enough to expose his chest. 

And the glowing blue hand print pulsing slightly over his heart. 

“What is this?”

Xander's eye snapped up towards Vaako's face again, stunned, and he was very grateful for his goggles. Otherwise, he was afraid his last remaining eye might have fallen right out of his head, he was so shocked. “...it's the mark. It's the Rage of the Furyans.”

His brows furrowed, tightly. “I have been marked because the Furyans are angry?”

“You've been marked because you _are_ a Furyan.” Xander lifted his jaw, smirking slightly. “She marked them all. She marked the Furyans, so that they would bear witness to what had happened to them. So that they would be able to do _something_ about it. So that they would burn with fury and rage and _hate_ and they would do what should have been done before. They would destroy the Necromongers. _That_ is what that mark is.” 

“You are lying to me.” Vaako took a step back from him. But he looked worried.

_Fuck_ . 

It was worth a shot. 

Xander lifted his jaw again, and tugged his goggles up, setting them on his forehead, exposing his eye and the eye patch, properly. A flicker of confusion passed over Vaako's face, like he didn't quite understand the colour of Xander's eye, or what he was doing. But he just met the man's gaze with his, and pulled himself up to his full height, trying to seem commanding. It had worked with Riddick.

It worked with Vaako.

The man dropped to one knee, bowing his head, low, exposing his neck.

Xander let out a long breath he hadn't actually realized he'd been holding, and grinned, sheepishly. “Sorry. You can get back up now, if you want to.”

Vaako scrambled to his feet, looking absolutely furious. “What  _is_ this?!” He snarled. 

“You're a Furyan,” he said, again. “Furyans are the only ones who bow like that. Trust me, I’ve tried with other people. Spent two years living with mercs, I tried it on every one I came across, just to see what would happen. Did _nothing_ , to any of them. Does nothing to the other convicts, does nothing to anyone. Except to the strongest, angriest, most aggressive men in the verse. _They_ bow. You're a Furyan, Vaako.”

“That is impossible,” he said, furiously. 

“Why impossible?” Xander frowned, glancing at him. “I mean, why would you think that was impossible? Do you remember _not_ being Furyan, or something?”

“There is nothing before becoming a Necromonger.”

He arched a brow, crossing his arms. “That's stupid. Of course there is something before becoming a Necromonger. Don't you remember your mother? Your father? Growing up?”

Vaako hesitated. “No.”

Xander blinked at him. “...no? Seriously, you don't remember anything?”

“I have been faithful for centuries,” he said, fiercely.

“ _Centuries_?”

Vaako nodded, curtly, frowning. “Yes.”

“...Furyans live for _centuries_?!”

“What? No.” He glanced back at him, frowning, brows furrowed tightly. He looked confused by the idiocy of that comment. “Furyans are just men. Necromongers live until their due time.”

“You guys are really obsessed with that due time stuff, huh?” He considered that. “So you could live for centuries, until you hit your due time. So I guess you're kind of like... well, you're not hot. I mean, I can tell from _here_ that you're cool. Not cold, just sort of cool, I guess... are you... alive?”

“Yes.” Vaako snapped.

“Hey, give me a break, I can't _tell_! I just know you're not warm, and most people that are alive are _warm_. You don't, uh.... drink blood, do you?”

“No,” he said again, glowering at Xander.

Xander considered that. “Do you eat, at all?”

“Am I an _experiment_ to you?”

“No, I’m just... trying to figure this out. Do you eat?”

“Yes,” Vaako said calmly, buttoning the front of his uniform back up. “We eat.”

“And you sleep, and have sex, and get sick, and all those normal things?” He asked, glancing back at him again. Xander was confused, but he was pretty sure that he was starting to cotton on to how this all worked. “Do you have medical services, at all?”

“If they get sick, they will get well. If they don't, then it was their due time.”

He snorted, crossing his arms. “Do you have children?”

“No.” Something that Xander couldn't identify flickered across Vaako's face. “We do not have children. We cannot have children.”

“So you're basically immortal undead who aren't really undead at all. Weird.” Xander considered that, relieved that it was so _dark_ in the Necromonger ship, like it was always at twilight. It was like his dreams, that planet he went to when he was in cryo – almost dark, almost like the sun was about to set. Perfect lighting for him to see everything. 

Vaako seemed to be thinking about his eyes, too. “You have the same eyes as the other Furyan.”

Xander stopped, twisting to look at Vaako. “Which Furyan?”

“Riddick.” 

He stopped. “You were sent to kill him, weren't you? That's why you were there, you were sent to kill him?”

“Succeeded.”

Xander froze. “...what?”

He frowned. “That is what my men tell me, that Riddick has been killed, that we left behind only a dead body on that hell planet. I only wish that I could have brought proof back for the Lord Marshall, but - “

Vaako cut himself off, quickly, when Xander nearly sank a slam shiv – they really should have checked him over a little better before dragging him aboard their ship – straight into the man's throat. His teeth were bared in a snarl, and Vaako was lucky that he was as good of a warrior as he was as he sidestepped Xander's attempts to slam the shiv into his face. He finally caught Xander's arms, holding him still. “What are you doing?”

“Let me _go_!” Xander roared, struggling against those hands. 

He released him, immediately.

Howling, Xander slashed at him again, but this time, Vaako wrenched the shiv right out of his hands, and threw it hard enough to embed it in the wall. He snatched Xander's arms again, when he tried to hit him again, and slammed him back against the wall. “ _Stay_ .”

“ _Fucker_!” Xander roared, struggling against his hold. The taller man was stronger than he would have given him credit for. 

“I was doing my duty.” Vaako said, fiercely, squeezing his forearms tighter than strictly necessary. 

“Your _duty_ killed my _mate_!” He howled, straining. 

“And I apologize for that. You will learn to move beyond this, in due time.”

“In due fucking _time_?!” He railed against his hands, trying to bite Vaako. He was good at biting, after all. “I don't want due time! I want my mate! I want the father of our _child_ to be alive!”

“Furyans mate, but are not trapped in only one mating for life. You can choose a new mate, in due - “

“If you say _in due time_ one more time, I will rip out your spleen!” Xander roared.

“You could choose to convert.” He said, still calm. But there was a darkness in Vaako's eyes that told him that even the man himself didn't believe what he was saying. “Though there are no Necromonger children.”

“Let me _go_ , Vaako,” he snarled.

The other man met his gaze, frowning, but didn't release Xander's arms. “There are always options open, for those that are willing to accept them.”

“Vaako. _Let. Me. Go_.”

The other man hesitated, then released his arms.

Xander jerked his arms back to himself, and hugged himself, trembling. He was too angry to think straight, but there was one thing he  _did_ get – Vaako really hadn't done anything wrong, not really. He'd done what he'd been told to do, what any warrior would do. Vaako  _was_ a Furyan, he was a warrior. But he knew who  _was_ to blame for what had happened. 

“I need access to the Lord Marshall.” 

Vaako glanced at him, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“I need access to him.” He grit his teeth. “I need a way that I can get uninhibited access to the Lord Marshall. And you are going to give me that.”

“Why would I do that?” He frowned, arching a single brow.

“Because I am Lavelle,” he stepped closer to the other man, lifting his jaw, meeting Vaako's gaze. “And you'll do it.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Vaako had a plan.

Xander didn't really  _like_ the plan, but it was the only plan that Vaako had, and he didn't really want to push his luck. After all, he'd figured out that Vaako was a Furyan, but he had no idea how long the 'all Furyans listen to me' thing was going to last. Hell, it might just be some kind of identifying thing that he had that would work long enough to figure out if the person was Furyan or not, and then they'd go to just listening because he  _was_ Lavelle, and then they might not  _have_ to do it. So he went with the plan, even though it was probably insane. 

They'd arrived on Helion, and he'd been whisked away to someone's living quarters – Vaako's, he thought – before anyone had even reported in that they'd arrived. He'd been pushed towards a shower, then Vaako had started arguing with a woman.

Xander had kept peeking out of the shower, curious, covered in suds. The woman was sort of terrifying, actually. Gorgeous, oh very very very gorgeous. But not a hair was out of place, not an eyelash was out of line. She was perfectly maintained, and flawless. But that was sort of unnatural, wasn't it, and the way she talked, she seemed so very much in control that it was actually sort of alarming. But her displeased expression finally smoothed as she apparently found some way to turn it to her advantage, and she gave Vaako several low orders before she swept out of the room, imperiously. He kind of had to wonder if other races had Alphas, too.

He'd gotten dressed in the clothes Vaako handed him, though he was suspicious, and as he fought with his hair, he demanded, “I thought you said you didn't remember being Furyan.”

“I don't.” He said, strapping his own ceremonial armour on. “But I remember this. Let's go.”

It had been strange, moving through the halls of the Basilica. No less than  _eight_ Necromonger guards fell into place around him, and he wasn't really sure if it was supposed to be an honour guard, or a guard to make sure he didn't get the chance to burst out and kill someone. He suspected the latter. 

They seemed to be in a rush, which he wasn't really surprised by. They wanted to get the Furyan – good god, he really had to  _play_ the part of the Furyan, too, didn't he – to where they were taking him, as fast as possible. The guards kept glancing at him, as they walked. They were scared, weren't they? Holy fuck, they were  _scared_ of him. What in the world had he ever done to make them scared of him? Oh right, he existed, and he was Furyan. 

The throne room was huge. There were massive statues around the wholly impressive space he was lead into, of massive people twisted in pain and anger and death. He wouldn't have even thought 'throne room' except for the massive chair at the front of the room, the one that an older man was sitting in. His armour was even more over the top than even Vaako's was, black and vicious looking, with spine like and saw-blade like details. 

The man looked... anxious. That was strange, wasn't it? Hell, the man was the leader of an entire race slavishly devoted to him and trusting completely in his ability to lead them to the Underverse. An entire species that felt no pain. Shouldn't he be the most secure person in the verse? But no, Xander supposed, anyone in that powerful of a position had to have equally powerful concerns weighing them down.

Oh god, what was he doing, embracing this whole 'Lavelle' thing? He should be running from power, not to it. He was no leader.

Too late now, though.

“Vaako!”

The Lord Marshall rose from his massive seat, smiling. 

This is the man that had ordered Riddick killed.

The hand print on Xander's chest started to  _pulse_ , glowing brighter, tendrils of that blue light creeping out from under his clothing, sneaking slowly down his arms, across his skin, like a living thing. He had to force himself still, because every fibre of his being said to leap forward, to tear the undead bastard heart from his chest, consequences be damned. This man had had his mate killed and by the verse itself, he would  _suffer_ for that. The anger  _should_ have freaked him out. He embraced it, instead.

“Lord Vaako,” the Lord Marshall was saying, holding out a hand, grinning. “I understand that congratulations are in order.”

“The Furyan Riddick is dead, my lord,” Vaako stepped forward, bowing his head. 

Xander ground his teeth, fingernails digging into his palms.

“That is excellent news.” He grinned, that anxious hunch to his shoulders that he'd had before was now long gone. He looked perfectly relaxed, completely at ease, as though the man in charge of the largest conquering force in the verse or the under one hadn't a care in either of them.

No, Xander supposed, he probably didn't. Not with Riddick dead.

That anger bubbled up again, and he embraced it. Fed on it.

“I have a gift for you, my Lord Marshall,” Vaako spoke up again.

The Lord Marshall looked actually taken aback by that, and he hesitated for a moment before grinning, almost diabolically. “The Furyan's head, perhaps?”

“His body burns on the wastes of Crematoria,” Vaako said, and Xander admired the calmness with which he spoke. Like it was natural, calm, and confident. From behind, though, he could still see the tenseness of the other's shoulders. Vaako may seem confident and calm, but Xander suspected that he hated this man _nearly_ as much as he did, but for completely different reasons. “What I bring you is more valuable. I bring you Riddick's prime. His breeding partner.” The guards around him abruptly stepped back, revealing him behind them. “The Lavelle Alexander.”

Silence didn't fall. Silence dropped so heavily on them it was as though sound itself ceased to exist.

Xander lifted his chin. He would show no weakness.

His hair was loose, for the first time since it had been long enough to tie back, and he was pretty sure that the dark curls around his shoulder blades would have easily rivalled Cordy's anyway – well, for split ends and knots, anyway. There were feathers and beads woven in the curls, which Vaako had insisted was traditional. He never would have believed him if he hadn't seen his mother with the feathers earlier. He wore leather, leather pants and a leather vest laced up that he was frankly shocked actually fit his round belly. Leather bracers, leather boots, and a thick golden necklace, made of multiple layers of small bands, and he felt like either he'd just escaped from an eighties hairband, or he was trying to wear his mother's clothing. He wasn't sure which was worse.

But the ridiculous outfit seemed to have the desired effect, because the Lord Marshall's eyes widened dramatically. “You dare to bring - ?!”

“My Lord Marshall,” Vaako said quickly. “This one is no threat to you – his concern is for his child. But you have already destroyed the last of the Furyans, surely it would be the ultimate blow to the race to destroy their last Lavelle, the last heir. To show to this verse and the next that the Necromongers have finally ruled triumphant over their foes.”

He was talking too much. Trying to play to the man's sense of vanity – it was brilliant , really. But he was  _talking_ too much, rambling. 

Good god, Xander thought. Do we  _all_ babble like idiots when we're trying too hard?”

But it worked.

“Yes,” the Lord Marshall said, slowly, a disturbing grin spreading slowly across his face. It was a twisted sort of grin, like that of a madman. “Yes, that's true.”

“Perhaps make an example of the Furyan breeder.” Vaako smirked.

He laughed, a low, deep chuckle. It was the laugh of a man secure in the knowledge that he was safe, that he had defied a prophesy, that he had escaped his fate. “Yes,  _that_ sounds like an excellent plan.”

“Wait until the perfect moment,” he prompted, smirking. Vaako seemed a _little_ too into this whole “betrayal of Xander” thing for his liking.

“Yes,” the Lord Marshall drawled, looking Xander up and down. It was a totally creepy moment, and he suddenly understood what people meant by “undressing them with their eyes”. He'd always assumed it was like when Riddick did it, and he always seemed to just look right through clothes, which the perve probably _did_ , what with the infa-red vision or something. It was as though Riddick deemed them superfluous and looked straight through them to whatever was beneath. But that was just sort of sexy. This was a degrading sort of feeling, and made him want to throw his hands in front of himself. He resisted the urge, but only just. “Yes. In his due time.”

Oh, he hated that term.

This time, Xander didn't resist the urge to snarl, but just as he'd sort of expected, the Lord Marshall just laughed. 

“Oh yes, I shall enjoy this.” He settled himself back into his throne, smirking. “Have the Furyan breeder brought to my chambers.”

The “honour guard” that had surrounded him before stepped around him again, close, and ushered him away. He was more reluctant to follow without Vaako leading the way, but it wasn't as though he had a whole lot of choice here, did he?

“Now, Vaako,” the Lord Marshall was saying as he was lead out of the room. “Today really is a day of days...”

  
 

\---

  
 

Dame Vaako was a woman who knew what she wanted. 

And when she wanted it, she got it.

She'd been Dame Thorne once, Dame Elai before that, and Dame Len and Dame Malloy and Dame Kern. Before that she'd just been a new convert named Paala. She'd caught onto the faith, the deep beliefs that ran through every decision made in the Necromonger society very quickly – and set to using it to her advantage, at once. She couldn't remember how long, exactly, she'd been one of the converted, but she had used her time to her full advantage.

She'd been accused of killing her former husbands, before, and it was true that a few had died before their due time. But Dame Vaako was loyal til Underverse come. 

As long as it suited her.

She'd essentially slept her way though the ranks of the Necromonger elite, and though it had taken her generations of normal mortal life, she'd gotten  _very_ close to the top. Vaako was, after all, now the Lord Marshall's second. Any higher, and she'd be sleeping with the Lord Marshall himself.

She wouldn't be adverse to that, were he a little less pathetic.

She'd rather been intrigued by that breeder, Riddick. It was one of the few times in her life as a Necromonger that she'd seriously considered leaving a current husband for a reason other than sheer power. He had been a man that a deep instinctual part of herself had just  _wanted_ . A man like that could handle a woman like her. But now he was dead, mores the pity, and her husband was far more powerful.

But Riddick's  _mate_ was still alive, wasn't he? He looked the part of a scruffy youngling, which would never do, but he  _was_ a Lavelle. Perhaps the Lord Marshall's way of exacting revenge on the race would be to convert the Lavelle. He'd done so before with the Purifier, after all, perhaps once he was converted and that pesky issue of a  _child_ was dealt with, she could become a Dame Alexander.

It didn't have the same tingle up the spine thrill ring that Dame Riddick gave her, but it would do.

Rather pleased with herself and this plan of action, she slipped out of the Basilica, rather planning on levering in her success among the people – but stopped dead, instead.

The ships were lifting from the ground.

They were leaving.

The other nobles looked as stunned and confused as she felt, and soldiers were moving up the stairs, intent on getting inside. It made no sense. They weren't due to leave for – well, for days, at least enough time to gather new converts and bring all their soldiers back. Why were they leaving now? What had happened?

One of the armoured guards slammed into her shoulder, and she spun, furious, ready to show the man the proper respect he should pay to the wife of the Lord Marshall's second.

Only something about him was wrong.

Familiar, actually. 

Gathering up her skirts, which were stunning for entrances and appearances, but terrible for actual movement, she ran after him.

So intent was she on finding out if her suspicions were correct that she barely even noticed the massive doors closing behind them. Or the hammering of those trapped outside, trying to get in.

She could just see the back of the man's armoured head, but he turned just a fraction, like he knew she was watching.

His eyes were a cold silver blue of unnatural light.

She'd seen those eyes before.

On a man that had once told her that it had been a long time he'd smelled beautiful and made even her dead Necromonger heart seem to jump. On a man her husband had told her was dead. On a man whose mate she'd been considering making her next conquest.

And then Riddick was gone.

Dame Vaako sucked in a sharp, strictly unnecessary breath, and darted to the wisest place that she thought she could use to her advantage – her quarters. 

She barely waited until the door slammed shut behind her before jabbing her finger into her startled husband's chest. “You have  _failed_ ! The Furyan still lives, and you told the Lord Marshall that he had been slain! Now your failure will destroy all I’ve done!”

Vaako gaped at her like some dim witted child. “What makes you believe this?!”

“I _saw_ him, Vaako! Not dead. Quite alive.”

He grabbed her arm, as though he were in the one in charge in their situation, gripping tightly. For another woman, it might have hurt. “Could you be mistaken?”

“There is no mistaking your _failure_ ,” she hissed. “He lives.”

Her husband released her arm as though burned by her, and stepped back, looking stunned.

“Well?” She snapped. “What do you propose we do now to salvage this disaster?”

“I must tell Xander.”

“... _Xander_?” She repeated, gaping at him. She has always thought that Vaako was more of a physically intelligent man than a mentally intelligent one, but this statement made no sense. It did not mesh with the image she had long ago developed of her fiercely loyal – to an idiotic fault – husband. “You mean the _Lavelle Alexander_?!”

Vaako scooped up several knives, tucking them in his belt. 

“What is this, that you intend to arm yourself up and then perhaps lead the Lavelle to find his mate?” She threw up her hands. “No, Vaako. This can be turned to our advantage. The Lord Marshall has ordered the fleet to leave the planet. He is afraid of the Furyan.”

He glanced at her. “And what matters of this to me?”

“He fears him. That means he has weakness. If he has weakness, he is not fit to lead us to the Underverse.”

Vaako hesitated. 

Dame Vaako laid her hand on his chest, as though trying to feel a heartbeat that wasn't actually there. Even though the fabric of his shirt, she felt heat on his chest. Heat? “Don't just do it for the power, Vaako. Do it for the faith. With an unworthy leader, we will never see the glory of the Underverse.”

“What would you have me do?” He demanded. “Simply keep what I kill?”

“It is the Necromonger way!” Dame Vaako was widely considered to be an expert on what exactly was the Necromonger way. After all, hadn't she married every one of her husbands by killing their previous wives?

Her husband finally nodded.

She has always been good at making men do what she wanted them to do. And Vaako had always followed her, almost obediently, like he really believed it was his duty. His innocence was actually delicious. “This can still be a day of days. But it must be done flawlessly. Do not let yourself become distracted from what you must do just because some little prince smiled at you.”

“I am loyal,” he said fiercely, which told her more about what Vaako actually thought of the Lavelle than he had perhaps meant to say. She had never once implied that that smile would imply unfaithfulness. Interesting. “Til Underverse come.”

“Naturally, my lord.” She smirked, patting his chest again.

Vaako flinched.

Dame Vaako blinked, willing to admit that she was actually startled by that reaction, and touched his chest again. “What is troubling you, my Lord Vaako?”

“Nothing is troubling me,” he said, quickly.

Naturally, he was lying.

She took a step closer to him, and tugged the front of his dress uniform open. He had removed his armour after being named second, and she felt that he should leave it this way – for the Lord Marshall to be killed by his second, and by a second that didn't even deem the Lord Marshall enough of a threat to even wear his armour would make the kill that much sweeter. Perhaps Vaako could be known as the Fearless when he become the seventh Lord Marshall. But as she tore the uniform open, she revealed something she'd never seen before – a blue hand-print glowing on his chest. “What is this?”

“If Riddick is truly coming, we need to prepare ourselves,” He stepped back, not answering the question.

“Vaako!” She said, sharply. Now was not the time for her husband to be developing a back bone. “What _is_ this?”

“A mark,” he said at last, pulling himself up a little straighter.

“A mark of _what_?” She laid her hand over the hand print. It was only a fraction larger than her own print would have been, and pulsed hot against her skin. She even swore, for a moment, that she felt a heartbeat beneath her palm.

“The anger of a race,” he answered her, and Vaako sounded different. More in control. “The wrath of the Furyans.”

Paala, called Dame Vaako, actually laughed.

Her hand still curled on her husband's chest, she laughed, a bitter, derisive sound, as she shook her head. “Is that what your Lavelle has told you, that he has somehow marked you as some kind of messenger for him? That somehow you carry a Furyan mark?”

The hand print flared hotter under her fingers, burning hot, and blue light rippled outward. Vaako abruptly caught her wrists, holding her still and stern for a moment, teeth bared in an impressive snarl, eyes narrowed. “It means, Dame Vaako, that  _I am Furyan_ . We all began as something else.”

She met his gaze for a long moment, then laughed, and pushed him away from her.

Naturally, Vaako dropped her hands, and stepped back.

“Some Furyan you are,” she sneered. “A whipped, broken shadow of a man that can't even kill a single breeder with a battalion. You disgust me. A snivelling prime that never moved beyond once he was converted.”

He simply glared back at her. He had no answer.

“Furyans are marked now, are they?” Baring her own teeth, Paala gripped the collar of her skin tight dress, that covered her chin to toe in snake skin, and tore the tough fabric right open, exposing her chest, her collarbone. Exposing the dully glowing blue hand print on her chest, just above her left breast. “Then I, too, am marked. Yes, Vaako. We all began as something else. This is what I began as.”

Oh, to be able to capture her husband's expression for all time. It was positively priceless.

“You are Furyan?!”

“I was.” She snapped, drawing herself up to her full height. It was not an impressive height. “I converted, Vaako. Voluntarily. In fact, I eagerly joined the glorious Necromonger faith. I left behind all that _was_ Furya.”

“I had no idea...” He said, slowly. 

“That is how it should be, Vaako.” She snapped. “We are Necromongers only. We have left behind anything we may have been before we started forward towards the Underverse.”

He actually looked torn.

Baring her teeth again, Paala realized that the loyalties of her earnest, too-hard-working husband had already been swayed. He was no longer slavishly loyal to her and the Necromonger faith. His loyalties had somehow been shifted to a species he'd forgotten about, to a boy Lavelle. She remember the loyalty, although she didn't feel it herself, remembered the need hardwired into them to obey the Lavelle's every wish. Not from fear. From an instinctual need to please the Lavelle. To make them happy. But she'd been a bit of a freak of their society, wasn't she, the female Alphas just didn't fit the pattern of everyone else. If they were mated, Vaako would have stayed perfectly loyal to her, but that would be acting on instincts she'd deliberately quashed. “Then act to save your Lavelle, Vaako. In either case, whether you do it to save our people or to save your prince, the Lord Marshall must die.”

“Yes.” he agreed. 

“Flawless, Vaako,” she said firmly. “It must be flawless.”

  
 

\---

  
 

Riddick and the Purifier moved through the crowds of Necromonger soldiers like a miniature invasion force, single minded and focused. They both wore the armour of common Necro soldiers, though they looked ridiculous. The Purifier had always been in an elaborately elegant simple set, and Riddick was simply too broad to fit the uniform properly. 

They'd been seen, earlier, by one of the lensors – the twisted once-men with faces that were more machine than flesh. They'd killed it, naturally, but the way people were moving about the ship now, they knew that they knew.

Riddick seemed to like that they knew.

The Purifier knew where to go, though, where to hide and where to linger and where to hurry, so soon they were outside the throne room itself, without any resistance. 

Riddick tore off the superfluous armour, dressed only in the breast plate. “We may not come out of this alive.”

“I know.” The Purifier removed his helmet, tossing it aside. It clattered on the floor, but over the hum of movement and conversation from within the throne room, no one heard it. He offered his hand. “It is a pleasure waging battle with you.”

He smirked, and clapped the other's forearm, a warrior's handshake, then stepped back, tugging out his blades.

“Avenge your mate,” The Purifier perhaps had a little of that inspiring Lavelle left to him. “Embrace the rage.”

Riddick grinned, almost ferally, and slid the blades against each other. 

_Schnickt._

It was a metallic slide, with a  _ting_ at the end, like it almost caught. 

_Schnickt._

_Schnickt._

_Schnickt._

The two guards watching the door itself turned, to investigate. Which was when Riddick plunged those blades straight into the guards's throats, throwing them back, forcing the doors open as he did. As entrances go, the only way he could have improved on that was if he'd slammed his way in and had had the Purifier standing behind him with a machine gun. It was a shame they had no machine guns in space.

Still, it was really something.

Especially when Riddick literally launched himself at the Lord Marshall, planning to plunge the knife into his chest. 

The Lord Marshall moved faster than any human had the right to move, and back handed Riddick, throwing him away across the room. He hit a rank of soldiers, and knocked them over like bowling pins. He scrambled up, baring his teeth.

“Riddick.” The Lord Marshall walked slowly down the steps, almost casually. His entire reign had been building up to this moment. He was ready. “You lived.”

“You won't.” Riddick growled.

“It doesn't have to be this way, my friend. The Necromongers embrace those who have no place in this verse, and assure them a place in the Underverse. Join us, Riddick. Become a part of our glorious future.”

He sneered.

“Others have embraced our message, Riddick.”

The Lord Marshall held out a hand, like a father leading a child out, and he smiled, tightly. From the crowed, two figures moved forward, in black, tattered, ragged robes. The taller of the two was a short, serene looking woman with short blond hair and bright as the Hades sky blue eyes, though almost milky now, clouded. Her hands were resting on the shoulder of a child, but not her own little boy, Ali, but the girl the Imam had introduced as Shazza's, Ziza. Ziza had a far away look in her whiskey coloured eyes, like she was lost. 

“Fry,” he breathed.

She looked up at him, smiling softly, serenely. “It hurts, at first. They don't lie to you, about that. But the pain fades, and everything becomes... clear. You can almost see the Underverse through his eyes.”

“C'mon, Fry, you're stronger than this bull shit,” Riddick growled. “This is not you.”

“Listen to your friend, Riddick.” The Lord Marshall said calmly, confident. “She understands what it means to be accepted, now. To belong in something. And the child... the child is my new Purifier. Since my old one seems to have... defected.”

The Purifier – the old one, that is – smirked, and fell into place behind Riddick. “A child.”

“It seemed an eloquent solution,” he said lightly, reaching out to tug Ziza's hood back, then set his hand on her curls, which seemed to have something of a life of their own. “The little lamb shall lead the masses to the Underverse.”

It was like the Lord Marshall had deliberately tried to pinpoint Riddick's trigger points, and use them against him. Children and those he cared about. In this case, both in one.

“Fry.” He said, sharply. “Wake up. Save the child.”

“There's no pain, Riddick,” she said, softly, and just stepped back, out of the way, as though she knew that a fight was coming. Perhaps she did. “It has been so long since I have not had pain.”

Ziza, in a soft, childish lisp, said, “The Underverse waits for us.”

The child was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

Riddick roared, and threw a dagger at the Lord Marshall.

A collective gasp ran through the crowd, as the leader reeled back, silently. It took a long few, anxious moments before he straightened, holding the dagger tightly. “It's been a long time since I’ve seen my own blood.” He said, trying to sound light and jovial and utterly failing. He lowered his hand, revealing that the blade had only nicked the side of the man's jaw, but no one else had ever been able to manage even that. He'd thought he'd beat the prophesy. Now he wasn't so sure. 

“You'll see a lot more of it,” he promised, sliding the ulaks from his belt with another _schnickt_ , and launched himself at the man.

To say that they were equally matched would be a bit of a misnomer. They were both fast, but the Lord Marshall was faster. They were both strong, but Riddick was stronger. But to say that no observer could tell how the fight could possibly go by how they fought alone, that would certainly be accurate. They fought like this was what they had been building up to their whole lives, like everything was dependent on this one moment. A lifetime of training for a single combat. It was the very essence of poetry in motion, a choreography of death and bloodshed. The promise of more blood was upheld – for both of the men. At any moment, one might tip the scales in their favour.

And then the Lord Marshall did exactly that.

With a resounding crash, he broke one of the display spears that were part of the statue displays over Riddick's back, and the man fell, stunned. Almost lazily, over confident again, the Lord Marshall stepped forward, hefting the broken spear, lifting it to impale the last Furyan. “It is your due time, Riddick. I am only sorry you won't get to see the Under - “

He cut himself off when someone launched themselves at him from the crowd. He knocked them away, too fast for the eye to follow, and they slammed against one of those decorative fineries, impaled on an artistic spike. 

Carolyn Fry, who had survived shipwreck, the massacre of her crew by aliens, a mercenary ship where they intended to kill her for sport, and even the invasion of the planet she'd made her home, cried out softly as blood bubbled from between her lips, and she slumped off of the spike, collapsing bonelessly to the throne room floor. She was crying, gurgling softly as she struggled to breathe. 

She always had been the noble type, hadn't she?

The Lord Marshall turned from Fry's body, disgusted, and sneered at Riddick. “And now your friends die uselessly for you, Riddick. One last chance. Convert, or die as she did.”

Riddick threw the ulak this time.

Perhaps he was blinded by rage because he threw it wide, far left of where the Lord Marshall stood. The Lord Marshall laughed at the poor aim, stepping closer to Riddick, intending to finish the blow he'd meant to lay earlier. He stopped laughing, however, when the ulak whistled back through the air and slammed the Lord Marshall in the back, slamming hard enough to pierce the armour.

There was a soft _thump_ to the side, and Riddick barely spared Vaako a glance. The man had landed lightly on one knee, having leapt from a higher landing, a massive bladed pole weapon in hand.

But Vaako wanted Riddick to pay attention.

His collar was unfastened, hanging open and more dishevelled than he could ever remember looking, but as a result it bared the Furyan mark. It was glowing, pulsing hotter now that he was down on this level, and he said firmly, “Riddick.”

The other man's blue-silver eyes flicked to him – then to the mark.

Hoping that the other understood, Vaako swung that massive weapon at the Lord Marshall as though trying to decapitate him. Naturally, the extremely fast man began to move, to get out of the way, which Vaako had anticipated. But he wasn't there to kill the Lord Marshall.

He was there to distract him.

Riddick had seen him coming, and anticipated where he was moving to.

And at the exact moment that the swiftly moving Lord Marshall “reappeared” in a new location, Riddick plunged a Necromonger dagger straight down, and into the top of the man's head.

The very air itself seemed to hold its breath.

Riddick twisted his hand to the side, snapping the handle right off of the blade, leaving the blade entirely buried inside the man's skull.

The Lord Marshall stayed upright for another few moments, as though he could possibly recover, then he dropped, heavily, like a sack of wet concrete. There was no life left in that body whatsoever.

“Was that your _due time_?” Riddick sneered, then moved forward to check on Fry.

She'd been a good friend, once.

“Riddick...” she rasped, when he touched her shoulder, crouching beside her. Those blue eyes were unfocused and lost, but she recognized him. “Ziza... I have to tell you...”

“Don't worry about the kid,” he told her sternly. 

“It's important...” she rasped. “Please... Ziza....”

“I know.” He said.

Her shoulders slumped a though he'd just taken a huge weight off her shoulders. “Xander...”

“I know, Fry,” he said again, and gently touched her eyelids, lowering them over those sky blue eyes as she went still, and stood, slowly. It was too much. Everyone he'd tried to keep alive had died. He'd told Lynn the truth when he said that those he cared about died. They always died. Fry, the boys, Shazza, Jack, Paris, Lynn, Dr. Silverman... Xander.

Their children.

He sank into a handy seat, not even noticing that it was the Lord Marshall's throne.

Everything he loved – and yes, he _loved_ – was dead.

Shading his eyes with his hand, Riddick just breathed. His revenge was complete. The Lord Marshall was dead, the Furyan race was avenged. Xander's killer had been repaid. 

He didn't feel better.

There was movement, and he shifted his hand off his damp eyes to blink at the sight before him. In waves, row after row, the Necromongers were dropping to one knee. Kneeling as he had, once, to a scruffy teenager in a brightly coloured shirt. But they were bowing to him. Only two remained standing – Vaako and the Purifier. They both stood before the throne, the only two among them who thumped a fist against their chests instead of bowing.

They recognized him as a Furyan leader.

The others were recognizing him as a Necromonger leader. 

He'd killed the Lord Marshall.

“You keep what you kill,” he breathed.

He was the new Lord Marshall.

“Fuck.”

It was Vaako who stepped forward, resting a hand on the armrest of the chair, leaning forward to murmur, quietly, to Riddick. His heart clenched for a moment, instinct telling him to kill the man that had been his enemy before, but there was something significantly _different_ about the man. “Riddick. Perhaps it would be best to get you somewhere safer for now.”

“Would you advise that?” He growled.

Vaako turned slightly, meeting his eyes. The man looked _awake_ now. “Yes. I do.”

Riddick waited a moment, to see it the man would try to convince him more, which would be a sure sign that he wanted him to leave the room for a specific reason, but Vaako just leaned back, waiting.

He nodded, and rose. “Lead the way.”

The Purifier fell into step behind them as they left. “Shall I talk to them?”

“Do whatever you want,” Riddick rumbled. He really didn't care.

“You may be Lord Marshall by rights, but this will cause unrest among the ranks. An unconverted leader will make them question their chances of reaching the Underverse.” Vaako said, frowning. “They may not trust _you_ anymore, however,” He glanced at the Purifier.

He smirked tightly. “I'll take my chances. Ah – should I order the destruction of Helion Prime finished, or - ?”

“Cancel.”

“Of course,” he nodded, and broke away from the pair, heading back towards the throne, holding his hands out. “I come to speak to you, faithful!”

Vaako led Riddick out of the throne room, and into the blessed silence of the empty hallways. They walked together, silently, their boots ringing through the hallways as they walked. 

“Your wife pissed you betrayed your Necro faith?” Riddick said abruptly.

“I have no idea what the Dame Vaako feels on this issue,” Vaako said tightly. “Though I imagine she will be less angry than she might have been because she is also Furyan.”

He glanced at him, sharply.

Vaako smirked, tightly, and gave him the only response he could muster: “We all began as something else.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen...”

Xander was chained, a loop around his wrists that was connected to a massive ring set into the top of the Lord Marshall's headboard. Yeah, to add insult to injury, he'd been captured, his mate had been murdered, and in order to get the revenge he needed to sate the boiling in his blood, he had to put up with the indignity of literally being chained to the man's goddamn _bed_.

He was pretty sure the Lord Marshall's plans for him weren't just conversion.

But Vaako had ordered the guards to leave Xander as he was when they hustled him off to the quarters. And sure, they'd taken the apparently ceremonial dagger he'd had strapped to his waist, but they hadn't taken Revas' hairpin out of his hair.

And it was gripped tightly in his fingers, now. He fully planned to kill another tyrant with it.

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...”

He could hear the footsteps coming closer. He'd started counting the first time he started hearing footsteps, and was keeping track. They'd got closer, then every time, when they hit twenty one steps, they turned, and went twenty one steps the other direction. A patrolling guard, probably. 

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty - “

They stopped. No twenty first step, no turn around, just silence.

Then the door opened.

Xander shifted back, hiding the hairpin in the small of his back, and waited. The newcomer – the Lord fucking Marshall – didn't turn on the lights. Bastard probably was trying to freak him out.

But he was _good_ at this. He could see in the dark.

He watched the hot body move closer in the pitch black. It would be easier with a _little_ light. Riddick had been brilliant at seeing in the dark, but Xander had had difficulty with full blackness ever since Toombs had cut out his eye. Just couldn't communicate between what he could see and what he should be able to see, if he'd had two eyes still, he supposed. But he still watched as he moved closer to the bed, then halted abruptly. For a long moment, the Lord Marshall just stood beside it, before he finally shifted forward to actually crawl onto the bed.

Xander waited until he came just within range, then swung. 

He caught his wrist, stilling the progress of his swing, and Xander snarled, “Son of a bitch. I am going to fucking kill - “

He shifted closer, and Xander sucked in a sharp breath.

“Stab me, bitch, and you'll regret it.”

“Riddick!” Xander howled, jerking on his chain, wishing to all hell that he wasn't still chained up. He _wanted_ to throw his arms around the other man and kiss him until he couldn't see straight, and never let him go. He'd really thought he'd lost Riddick. Again.

Fortunately, Riddick did it for him.

He was still gripping his arm as he pressed his other hand against Xander's lower back, hauling him forward and into his lap, pulling Xander against his chest as he pinned his arms between them, and kissed him fiercely. It was a demanding, ravenous kiss, really less kissing and more possessing. Curling his fingers over the top of the breastplate that Riddick wore and still wishing that his hands were free, he threw himself into the moment, into the affection – it was a sort of affection, anyway – and thanked anything that would listen that he had Riddick back.

The verse was right again.

“Where the fuck - “ he gasped, through feverish kisses, trying to get even closer to Riddick, but that was hard. It wasn't easy to get closer when you were already skin to skin. “ - have you been?”

He snorted, nipping firmly at Xander's jaw. “I was taking revenge. For your mother.”

“My mother?” he panted, gripping tighter at the edge of the breastplate. 

“Well, it ain't some other Furyan prince I’m fucking whose mother sent me on a mission to avenge the deaths of a whole fucking species,” he rolled his eyes, nipping at Xander's jaw again, making him bleed, and lapped the blood up. He loved making him bleed. 

Xander groaned, and clutched at him, biting at Riddick's earlobe, where he could reach it. “How'd you know she was my mother?”

“Because she threatened to gut me if I hurt you.” He smirked against the other's skin, working at drawing blood again. 

“How is she – she supposed to do that?” He panted. “She's dead.”

“No idea.” Riddick rumbled, and bit at the hollow of Xander's throat, rumbling with laughter as he cried out, arching into him. 

“Bastard,” he grumbled, and wriggled his fingers. “Unchain me.”

Riddick smirked. “Is that an order?”

Xander pouted. “C'mon, Riddick, I want to touch. I’ve got my mate back. I want to _touch_.”

“Later.” He drawled, and shifted himself, making Xander slide back off his lap with a yelp, and then pushed the younger man back further, holding those chained hands pinned above his head. And _then_ he tugged out a small dagger to slide it under the laces on the front of Xander's pants, slicing straight through them. 

“You are _not_ going to fuck me still chained up!” He yelped.

Riddick just smirked.

“Oh you _suck_ ,” he rumbled, struggling against the chains again, trying to get free. 

But an hour or so later, he barely even registered when Riddick _did_ remove the chains, lazily. He was kind of distracted, and just sort of rolled towards him a little, lowering his stiff arms to curl one of them over Riddick's bare chest, curling into him. “Heh. I suppose I should take off the ruined clothes, huh?”

“Hm.” Riddick shrugged slightly, not really caring. 

“So... _did_ you kill the Lord Marshall?” he asked, finally, squirming even closer to him, almost lazily, tucking his head under Riddick's jaw. It was a bit more 'snuggly' than he was pretty sure the other would have liked, but Riddick also didn't argue, so he went with it. Made him happy, if nothing else. “I mean, I figure you probably wouldn't be here if you hadn't, and there was that whole prophesy thing and everything, but... did you?”

“He's dead.”

Xander slumped slightly, closing his eye. The verse was now an even better place to be. “Okay. Okay. That's – thank you.”

Riddick snorted.

“Well, it seems like a good response!” Xander protested, flushed. “Would you really rather I went all 'well god dammit, you should've left some killing for me to do'? I mean, the guy royally fucked up everything! He destroyed our planet, our species!”

“He killed Fry.”

Xander froze. His eye was wide in shock, and he bolted up, gaping at his lover. “He killed _Fry_?!”

“Converted her,” he said, looking up at Xander. “She tried to convince me to join, too. But then she – woke up, or something. Tried to kill the Lord Marshall. He killed her.”

“Son of a – but the _children_.” Xander paled. “Imam has them, right?”

“Don't know. Shazza's kid is here.”

“ _Here_?!”

“They converted her.” Riddick frowned. “Said they needed a new Purifier, that a child would lead them.”

“They - “ Xander gaped at him, starting to tremble. The hand print on his chest was starting to flare again, blue light trailing down his arms, his torso, up his neck. “They _converted_ Ziza?!”

He nodded, frowning.

Xander scrambled out of the bed, jerking his pants back up. He swore when he realized that the strings were still cut from Riddick's hasty attempt to get him out of them – he'd completely forgotten about that. Struggling for a moment to get them done up, he finally just swore and left it. At least there was a leather piece inside that prevented him just sort of falling _out_ or something, and he shoved Revas' hairpin back in his belt. “Well?!” He demanded. “Come on! I need you to lead the way! We have to go!”

“Do we?” He arched a brow.

“ _Yes_ , Riddick! We have to go save Ziza!”

“You know I hate when things happen to children, but - “

“She's your daughter!”

Riddick froze.

It's a sight not seen very often, for that literal bundle of action to be stilled for any reason, or for any length of time, but he absolutely went completely still.

“My daughter.”

“Yes, dammit! Your daughter! My daughter! Imam has had her, he promised to take care of her, fuck, he even _named_ her. Named her after Shazza's child when they _both_ died!”

Riddick was suddenly off the bed, teeth bared as he gripped Xander's throat. It wasn't tight enough to be anything more than just uncomfortable, but the obvious rage was almost palpable in the air. “You said our child was dead.”

“I said she wasn't breathing when she was born.” Xander lifted his jaw, exposing his throat. 

“That's dead.” He snarled.

“Imam said it was a miracle.” He said, tightly. “She was _blue_ , Riddick. Umbilical cord got wrapped around her neck, but after he cut it off, she made this sound... but she never cried.”

“You _left_ her and let me think she was dead.” he snarled.

Xander bared his teeth right back, like an angry animal. “You're the most wanted man in the verse. There was a huge bounty on my head. If you'd known, you would have gone to see her. It was better she was just Shazza's child, or people like Toombs would go after her!” He pointed at his eye-patch “This is what he did to the _lover_ of the Riddick, what the hell do you think he'd do to the _child_ of the Riddick?!”

“Later,” he said abruptly, dropping his hand, and tugging his own pants back on. He'd not bother with a shirt.

“Yeah, I know.” He panted, and hurried towards the door. “Later, I owe you - “

The door slammed open, and Xander spun, jerking that hairpin out of his belt again – then hesitated when he realized that it was Vaako. “What the – do people just _normally_ bust in here?”

Vaako nodded quickly to Xander, not an answer, just sort of a brief sign of respect, then brushed right past him to bow his head again, this time to Riddick. “I know I should not have intruded, but you're needed. Immediately.”

“What is it now?” He frowned, pushing past them both to leave the room.

They both followed. 

“There is some... unrest... among the faithful.” Vaako seemed to be selecting his words carefully. “They're rather threatening to tear your Purifier limb from limb.”

Xander looked at him sharply. “ _Your_?”

“The old one, or the new one?” Riddick frowned, and their pace picked up.

“The old one.”

“Hm.” He frowned, brows furrowed. 

“ _Your_ Purifier?” Xander repeated.

“It's the Necromonger way,” Vaako explained, glancing over at Xander. “You keep what you kill.”

“So? What does that – oh my _god.”_

Riddick smirked tightly. 

“Oh my _god_ , you're the goddamn Lord Marshall!” Xander yowled. “Holy _crap_ , you're actually the Lord Marshall, aren't you? You actually rule the Necromongers!”

Riddick didn't answer, but Vaako did nod. “Yes. He does.”

“Do you – do you have to destroy planets and shit now?” He looked horrified. “Or can you make them wake up?!”

“He's to lead us to the Underverse.” Vaako answered.

“Fuck the Underverse,” Xander squawked. “We need Ziza back!”

“Ziza?”

“Our daughter.” Riddick rumbled, and threw the doors open, marching into the middle of a riot.

Everywhere, people were shouting, protesting something. Probably the fact that a Furyan, the very species they had been trying to eliminate for thirty years, was now their Lord Marshall. How were they to go to the Underverse with him as their leader? He would never Crusade, they'd never reach it in their due time.

The Purifier – their old one – wasn't dead. He was trying to calm them down, to reassure them that they would get to the Underverse. But it was a losing battle.

It didn't help that a very charismatic, calm as anything little girl stood on the throne itself, holding her hands out. “The pilgrimage must progress. The Underverse waits, and it is beautiful, faithful ones!”

“Ziza!” Xander cried, in horror.

The girl lowered her hands, smiling softly. “Lo, the Furyans speak.”

Every head snapped to look at them.

“Ah, the Lord Marshall...” The Purifier grinned, relieved, and headed forward. The crowd – and it really was a crush of humanity crammed into the space – stepped aside to let him through. He stepped right behind the other three, hovering just behind Xander's shoulder. “They seem rather... unsure of their future, now, my Lord.”

Stony faces met their gaze – no Necromonger in the crowd was going to betray weakness – _or_ admit that they didn't trust their new leader.

“They are fools.”

The crowds parted again, this time to allow Dame Paala Vaako through the crowd. She wore a dress that left very little to the imagination, which clung tightly to her curves and had a deeply plunging neckline, which showed not only an enticing taste of decolletage, but also the glowing blue hand print just above her left breast. “They are fools,” She said again. “The Necromonger way is changing. There is a new force. If we reach the Underverse in our due time, it will only be due to the leadership of a _new_ Lord Marshall.”

Paala stepped up behind Vaako's shoulder, matching the Purifier's position. It was like a traditional honour guard. Flanking their leader. 

Five warriors, each with the glowing hand print on their chest.

“They are unconverted,” Ziza said, voice soft and light. Not like the voice of a child. “What do they know of the glory of the Underverse?”

The blue hand prints began to glow brighter.

“Ziza.” Xander said firmly, taking a step forward. Riddick threw out a hand to halt him, but Xander shoved the Lord Marshall's arm away and kept walking. That was his _baby_ , god dammit. “Ziza. Wake up.”

“I am awake. I have been woken from my ignorant sleep.” She said, dreamily.

The hand print on Xander's chest was really glowing now. Like before, the tendrils of light seemed to crawl over him, but now they were spreading to his fingertips, up his jaw. His eye had begun to glow like a torch. “Ziza.” He said again. “Wake. Up.”

“Join us. Convert.” She seemed unconcerned that Xander stood right in front of her now. But her eyes were unfocused, glazed. “Join us in the Underverse.”

He reached out, and placed his now glowing palm against her chest. “Wake up.”

And then Xander exploded.

That is, the blue light that had begun to completely engulf him flared out like a supernova, all but swallowing Ziza, then blasting out across the room, and beyond. It absorbed the men and women that stood throughout the throne room, knocking about two thirds of them down to the floor. It was strange, that some just had to throw their hands in front of their eyes and try to avoid getting burned, but nearly two thirds of the room were literally thrown back, slamming to the floor, hard. The light burned in their retinas even after the flare of blue was gone, but finally it passed, and Xander slowly slid to the floor, on his knees, eye wide and stunned. 

Ziza let out a soft whimpering sound, and slumped to sit in the throne itself. 

Riddick was there, in a heartbeat, hauling Xander to his feet. The younger man clutched at his lover's shoulders, shaking slightly, breathing sharp and hard, like he'd just run a marathon. But he shifted slightly, still clinging to Riddick as he reached out to Ziza.

The little girl reached out with trembling fingers, slipping a chubby hand into his. 

There was a cry of pain, or surprise, perhaps both, from somewhere in the crowd, and Xander looked up sharply. He was still clutching at Ziza's hand and Riddick's shoulders, curled tight into his mate with his child, but he watched, stunned, as men and women in the crowd stood up and turned on those that had fallen. Those that had been knocked down by the blast of blue light were being killed, _en masse_ , across the room.

“What the hell...?” Xander whispered.

“Look,” Riddick rumbled, quietly.

Frowning, he looked around the room, then did notice the common denominator that Riddick had already spotted – every one that was standing, those that were doing the killing, had a blue hand print just visible through the collars of their armour and dresses, and those that were being killed, the majority of the group, really, did not have the blue hand prints. A third of the Necromonger army had been Furyan, before they had been converted. 

And the Furyans had woken up.

It was over, fairly quickly. 

The Necromongers, after all, were a race that held tightly to the belief that “you keep what you kill”. So at any given moment, they were ready to leap on any man or woman that had what they wanted, to kill them to get it. “Do not covet” that Xander remembered from his childhood was the very antithesis of the Necromonger way. So while those standing, splattered with the blood of a fallen faith, weren't exactly Necromongers anymore, they held enough connection with them that the impulse to kill still sang in their blood. Or maybe that was the Furyan part of them, waking up. Xander wasn't really sure which it was.

Ziza tugged at the leather braces Xander wore, and he instinctively tugged her up, settling her on his hip and trying to juggle her and, well his stomach. His stomach actually hurt – probably the whole explosion of light thing, whatever the _hell_ that had been. It had drained him, whatever it was. He felt like he'd been hollowed out, his insides emptied out of him. Like his anger had been burned out of him.

Riddick reached out and pushed Ziza a little higher in Xander's arms.

It was just such a fatherly thing for the other to have done that Xander hesitated for a moment, startled. The other man smirked crookedly at him, then said, quietly, “Xander. Look.”

He almost failed to look, actually. Riddick had _actually_ called him by his name. He was pretty sure he was allowed to be startled. But then he realized that Riddick really was tugging his wrist, leading him to look, and he glanced, quickly, out over the throne room itself.

And gaped at what he saw.

Thousands of men and women, in armour and ceremonial robes, with saw blade and spine motifs in their jewelry and their decorations, literally an entire army, had all dropped to one knee. They knelt in the blood of an entire swiftly defeated race, and bowed their heads as one, those blue hand prints glowing just visible above their collars.

“What...?” Xander said, confused.

“You rule an actual nation now,” Riddick smirked, and nodded at the assembled army. “They're all yours, Lavelle.”

“Oh _hell_ no, you're the Lord Marshall!” Xander squeaked.

“Necromongers don't exist. They killed them.”

“They keep what they kill,” Xander said, swallowing. “Now the Furyans _are_ the Necros. We own everything they owned, that's what they are. Besides, dammit, Lavelles are spiritual leaders – _you_ lead them! I just tell 'em what – _oh_.”

“Oh?” Riddick frowned.

He swallowed. “Can someone find us a doctor?”

Riddick just frowned, arching a brow. The question was obvious – he wanted to know why the hell he needed medical help. After all, he hadn't been injured. He wasn't bleeding. He looked completely fine.

Xander cleared his throat. 

“Ah... baby's coming.”

  
 

\---

  
 

“Remy Osbourne, you get your ass down here right now!”

He cackled, leaning out of the tree he'd deemed his perch, and stuck his tongue out at his younger sister. “You wish, kibble breath!”

Willow laughed softly, and sipped at her tea. She had been forced, sometime in the last eighteen years, since her best friend had gone missing, to realize that her children were going to misbehave no matter _what_ she did. Taken a leaf out of her husband's parenting book, perhaps. 

“They are gonna break their necks,” Faith warned, but she was grinning. “Oh well, least slaying pays good benefits – oh wait, no they don't. G-man, you really ought to get on that.”

He snorted as he set a mug down on the little wooden table on the front porch, where they say. “I'll suggest that to the Watcher's Council.”

“It was like pulling teeth just to get an expense account,” Jessica laughed. “Health care may be beyond our pay grade.”

“Hey, I’m the Slayer. One girl in all the world, yadda yadda,” she pouted. “That should totally merit some perks. Like really good perks. I’m the _only_ Slayer, you know?”

“We've heard,” Giles smirked. “Perfect day today, is it not?”

“Mm.” Jessica nodded. 

“You don't look convinced,” he considered her.

“Seeing all the grandchildren playing just makes me wonder, you know. If Xander has a family of his own, or...”

“Oh yeah,” Faith grinned. “Never got to meet that kid. I really wish Xander was here, too.”

There are certain words that should never be uttered on the Hellmouth.

And those words should never, ever be uttered on a Hellmouth by a Slayer on the day of the new moon when the stars were in the very particular alignment they were in.

(Not that any of that _actually_ mattered, the fact she'd said the words on the Hellmouth at all did it.)

Those words, by the way, were “I wish.”

There was no flash of light, no blast of sound, nothing except a slight shift in air pressure, then abruptly there was a man standing on the porch with them.

He was tall, dressed in black leather and silver jewelry, with a heavy clock wrapped around him, like he'd been in a cold place before. His long curly hair, greying at the temples, was pulled back into a tight braid, with feathers woven through his hair, and he wore a pair of black goggles that completely obscured his eyes.

“Holy – where'd the Ares cosplayer come from?!” Faith leapt to her feet, tugging a stake out of the back of her jeans. Instinct, really.

He jerked a silver, serrated weapon out of his belt, slashing her wooden stake in half.

“Holy crap,” She blinked, impressed. “Okay, good old fashioned hand to hand combat ass kicking time, then.” Faith swung to kick him, but jerked her leg back when Jessica cried out: 

“Wait!”

They watched, stunned, as Jessica stepped forward, towards the stranger. “...Xander?”

Willow sucked in a sharp breath. “No way...”

The man grabbed his goggles, shoving them up. Doing so revealed a black eye patch over one of his eyes, and that the other was a dully glowing blue-silver rather than the whiskey brown it used to be. But the face underneath, though much older and worn, was that familiar one they used to see grinning over the box of donuts he would carry into the library every morning.

“Holy Underverse...” Xander breathed.

“ _Mom_?!”

 

 


End file.
